Kathleen (Katie) Purvis-Roberts is a Professor of Chemistry & Environmental Science in the W.M. Keck Science Department at Claremont McKenna, Pitzer, and Scripps Colleges in Claremont, CA where she has taught for the past 14 years. She is currently serving as the Assistant Vice President for Student Development at Pitzer College after two years as Associate Dean of Faculty. Katie received a B.A. in chemistry from Westmont College, a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Princeton University and performed postdoctoral research at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Her research focuses on characterizing the water soluble component of Secondary Organic Aerosol formation from alkyl amines and alcohol amine precursors and the perceptions of risk and environmental impacts of nuclear testing near Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan. Her research is supported by the National Science Foundation. In 2013 she was awarded a prestigious Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar award from the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation. She has supervised over 45 undergraduate students in her air pollution research lab. She is the co-author of two environmental chemistry textbooks, Chemistry in Context for non-majors and Chemistry of the Environment for majors. She is also on the Executive Board of the Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences.

State Department Profile

Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs
Office of Economic Policy 

Katie Purvis-Roberts serves as a Foreign Affairs Officer in EAP/EP. The office coordinates the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, and she oversees the Policy Partnership for Women and the Economy (PPWE) working group for EP. The goal of PPWE is to advance the economic integration of women in the Asia-Pacific region, which includes an emphasis on increasing the number of Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) across APEC economies. Katie is also in the process of organizing a workshop under the Energy Working Group (EWG) to use a Life-Cycle Impact Assessment of Clean Energy investments, which will help representatives from APEC Economies make an economic argument for the health and environmental impacts of different energy sources. During her first month in EAP/EP, Katie was the Point of Contact for the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs for foreign governments attending the Our Ocean Conference.