Dr. High received her B.S. from the University of Michigan in 1985, her M.S. from Penn State in 1988 and her PhD. in 1991. She was born in Ann Arbor, MI and grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan. As a kid she was very involved with singing, theatre, dance, and swim team and Marching Band. She was also a nerd as she was on her high school traveling math team (she would take math tests on Saturdays!).

In college, Dr. Karen became friends with other nerds and married Dr. Marty High at Penn State. She traveled quite a bit to New York City and Washington, D.C. with these friends and even picked grapes for a local winery! The grad students also grew a vegetable garden together!!

For her M.S., Dr. High did a biomedical project that looked at the mechanics of transport during high frequency ventilation. For her PhD., she looked at solving nonlinear chemical process optimization problems using parallel and super computing!

Since coming to Oklahoma, Dr. Mrs. High has been involved primarily with process design, optimization and control projects. These have had an environmental bent (how to minimize waste while maximizing profit), a catalytic focus (how to do refinery operations better with new catalysts) and a control aspect (how to control to economic optimums as opposed to a set point). She has thoroughly enjoyed working with undergraduates and graduates on these projects.

Dr. High is also very interested in creativity and entrepreneurial skills and how they apply to engineering education. This includes product design and development of new technologies and all issues that get them commercialized from cradle to grave! She also has a love of anything Disney and has even spent time at Walt Disney World looking at Imagineering and other behind the scene aspects.

Outside of OSU, Dr. High has two daughters (Jessica and Abigail) that keep her very busy as well as a cat, 2 dogs, and fish! Dr. Karen enjoys reading and travel.