Karen Meech is an Astronomer at the Univ. of Hawaii's Institute for
Astronomy, and is PI of the UH NASA Astrobiology Lead Team.  She
got her PhD. from MIT in Planetary Physics in 1987.  In 1998 she 
received the Annie Jump Cannon Award in Astronomy, and in 1994 was
the recipient of the American Astronomical Society Urey Prize.  She
is a Co-Investigator on the NASA Deep Impact, Stardust-NExT and 
EPOXI missions.

Her research interests include the optical study of distant comet
activity and how this relates to the early solar system physics
and chemistry, the physics and chemistry of small icy solar system
bodies, and more recently in astrobiology, the origin of water on
terrestrial habitable planets.