she/her

Kumari Karunaratne is the Assistant Director, Information Services at Northwest Territories Geological Survey. Her PhD research examined permafrost conditions at sites across treeline in the Northwest Territories (NWT) including industrial sites like the Ekati Diamond Mine. After graduation she worked for Tetra Tech in Yellowknife and had the opportunity to learn about geotechnical engineering and work on community and industrial development projects across the NWT and Nunavut. She is the President of the Canadian Permafrost Association and helped organize the North Yukon Permafrost Conference, held in Dawson City, Yukon in August 2022. Kumari is a teacher at heart and strives to increase geoscience literacy especially in Indigenous and Northern people who are living on land with high-mineral potential and are facing the impacts of accelerated climate change.