Katrina Yezzi-Woodley is interested in how meat-eating impacted human behavioral evolution. Her research focuses on how early humans were breaking bones for marrow, especially in a landscape where they competed with threatening, large-bodied carnivores for food resources. Katrina uses 3D modeling, differential geometry, and machine learning to determine how animal bones were broken at archaeological sites and how to put them back together again.

Katrina is also the founder and executive director for Science and Social Studies Adventures (SASSA), a non-profit organization that connects diverse K-12 students and collegiate researchers to engage in community-based education and research. The vision of SASSA is a world where youth are excited and interested in socially engaged critical thinking and research, recognizing their ability to produce valuable knowledge, and feeling individual purpose and community connection.

Katrina was a National Science Foundation SBE Postdoctoral Research fellow at the University of Minnesota from 2022 to 2024. Her research mentor is Dr. Gil Tostevin. Katrina earned her Ph.D in biological anthropology at the University of Minnesota under the direction of Dr. Martha Tappen.