Catherine graduated in mechanical engineering from Ecole Polytechnique of Montreal. She also has a B.Sc. in Chemistry from University of Montreal and a M.Sc. in Metallurgy from Queen’s University, in Kingston. Her thesis was on metastable phases and solidification in microgravity.

Following her Master degree, she taught manufacturing and metallurgy in Gabon for a year. She then went to work in France for a small consulting company called Orbitics, working on hardware development for parabolic flights. Then she worked for ESA in Germany on a long duration space mission simulation as a ground crew member. This experience brought her to work for the Astronaut office at the Canadian Space Agency on a short duration space mission simulation aimed to train 4 Canadian astronauts on some aspects of a space mission, like isolation, confinement, workload, communication protocols, etc. She was responsible for the “on board” international payload, astronaut training and mission timeline. She then worked on several projects in design, stress and dynamic analysis for specific shuttle and Mir missions (MIM, LMIM, FLEX). Then she joined the Space Science Microgravity Science Program as a project manager contributing to develop the Canadian users of the ISS. She is also the project manager of a material science furnace for ISS called ATEN. She is presently the acting manager of the group.