Katherine Franz

Katherine Franz joined Silent Spring Institute as a Research Associate in 2023. Her work focuses on sharing individual study results with participants, also known as “report-back”, as a tool to strengthen researcher-participant relationships and promote environmental health literacy. Using Silent Spring’s DERBI tool, she develops reports to help people interpret their individual results from environmental exposure measurements, including contaminants in drinking water, chemicals measured in blood, and radon levels in homes. She also contributes to PFAS exposure studies by conducting field sampling of dust, air, soil, and home-grown produce from homes across Massachusetts.

Katherine received a BS in Environmental Sciences and Anthropology from the University of Notre Dame. As an undergraduate in the Pulte Institute, she investigated the impact of water sanitation infrastructure on public health in Arcabuco, Colombia. She also analyzed nutrient concentrations of freshwater lake samples as a research assistant in an aquatic ecology lab and studied territorial calling behavior in green frogs at the University of Notre Dame Environmental Research Center.