Kim Natasha Dirks is a Canadian–New Zealand academic, and is a full professor at the University of Auckland, specialising in infrastructure impacts on population health.
At a medical faculty, I was able to come up with ways to improve people’s health, but it was much more difficult to influence the decisions being made about the provision of infrastructure", she said.
[4] Dirks then moved to the Faculty of Engineering at Auckland, where she considered she had a greater chance to create change, and where as of 2024 she is a full professor.
Dirks and her students have researched the barriers to cycling in Auckland, in comparison to a similar study done ten years prior.
[4][5] She has also investigated how access to green space, which has positive health impacts, can be maintained in denser cities, and co-authored research showing that the microplastics in Auckland's atmosphere equate to three million plastics bottles per year.