Katherine Kirk joined University of Northampton in 2019 and lectures on the degree programme in Non-Destructive Testing which forms part of the NDT Apprenticeship scheme. She has one PhD student in non-destructive testing. She was formerly Professor of Physics and research group leader at University of the West of Scotland (2000-2018), where her research interests were thin film ultrasonic devices and applications. She has 200+ research outputs including 70 papers in refereed journals.
Her PhD from University of Strathclyde was in High Temperature Superconductors, followed by research positions in nano-magnetism for data storage applications and ultrasonic non-destructive testing at University of Glasgow and University of Strathclyde. She is co-inventor on patents in thin film ultrasonic transducer, ultrasonic anaesthetic needle guidance, and piezoelectric actuator for adaptive optics.
She is a Council member of British Institute of Non Destructive Testing (Vice President 2021), and Chair of BINDT’s Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Group. She also serves on the Institute of Physics committees, “Women in Physics” and IOP Scotland. She is a Fellow of the Women’s Engineering Society.
Dr Kirk has led several projects in Diversity and Inclusion in Engineering and Physics, including “Giving Girls another Chance to Choose Physics and Engineering” which looked at the effect of entry criteria to engineering and physics degrees. She was awarded Royal Academy of Engineering outreach funding for a historical project “A Car for Women and Other Stories”, about Dorothée Pullinger, pioneer motor engineer in the early 20th Century.
