Dr. Katie Richardson has worked in the office of U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-NM) for four years. The Senator sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Energy & Natural Resources Committee, as well as the Select Committee on Intelligence. As the State Science and Development Director, Katie works closely with mission partners at Kirtland Air Force Base as well as New Mexico’s three national laboratories: AFRL, Sandia, and Los Alamos. She also works to expand private industry and increase capacity in the state for the energy sector, tech transfer, telecommunications, infrastructure, and higher education. Katie has a B.S. in Physics from Caltech, an M.S. in Physics from UC Irvine, and finished her Ph.D. in Physics at UNM in 2012. She looks forward to the day when dark matter becomes a pressing policy matter. She loves to trail run and has (slowly) completed the Mt. Taylor 50 kilometer race each of the last three years.