Katie Mack

Katherine (Katie) Mack joined NC State in January 2018, as a Chancellor’s Faculty Excellence Program cluster hire in Leadership in Public Science. An assistant professor in the Department of Physics, she focuses on research on theoretical cosmology — the study of the universe on the largest scales — with an emphasis on its connection to particle physics. Her interests include dark matter, the early universe, the formation of galaxies, black holes and the ultimate fate of the cosmos.

Mack earned her Bachelor of Science from Caltech and her Ph.D. from Princeton University. She has held prestigious postdoctoral fellowships at Melbourne University and the University of Cambridge, and in 2017 was chosen as the Australian Institute of Physics Women in Physics Lecturer.

Alongside her research activities, Mack is an active science communicator, working to extend access to science and to share her passion for physics and astronomy with the wider world. Her science writing has appeared in media outlets such as Scientific American, Slate, Sky & Telescope, and Cosmos Magazine, and she is a prominent voice on Twitter as @AstroKatie.