[2] Her work focuses on ice-ocean interactions, ice-shelf disintegration, sea-level rise and ocean circulation changes.

[4] Before she attended graduate school, she lived in Los Angeles where she worked at AeroVironment and volunteered for the Sierra Club.

Pettit is a National Geographic Emerging Explorer who innovated applying acoustic research with hydrophones to calving and melting glaciers reaching the ocean, to examine ice shelf disintegration and the ice-ocean boundary.

[6] Her work has been recognized by numerous high-profile sources, including EARTH magazine,[7] and National Geographic,[8] and she was invited to present a TEDWomen talk,[9] on her investigations focused on "listening" to glaciers.

[12] During the program, adolescent girls learn mountaineering skills, how to use GPS for glacier measurement and how to calculate the velocity of streams.