Kristy earned a BSc and MSc in Civil Engineering in the 1980’s and worked for almost 10 years as a construction engineer. She returned to graduate school at CU Boulder and received her Ph.D. in 2000 in Geophysics. Her research focuses on understanding the processes that govern natural and anthropogenic hazards, such as earthquakes, induced seismicity, volcanoes, flooding, landslides, ground subsidence, and sea level rise, using a combination of remote sensing data, computational methods, and geophysical models. These studies incorporate big data sources such as space-based synthetic aperture radar (SAR), differential interferometric SAR (DInSAR), GPS data, seismicity, and gravity, to provide insights into the nature and scale of these hazards, including the implications for and consequences of infrastructure and society.