Kim Dirks

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.

Early life and education
Dirks grew up near Montreal, Canada, and initially trained in physics and meteorology, before moving to New Zealand. She has a Bachelor degree from McGill University, and completed a Master of Science and a PhD at the University of Auckland. Her doctoral thesis was on modelling air pollution, and was completed in 2001.

Academic career
Dirks then joined the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences at the University of Auckland. Researching the health impacts of air pollution at the population level led Dirks to realise the impact of urban infrastructure on people's exposure to pollution. "The urban infrastructure influences how people spend their time and move about. 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. 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's research covers the link between infrastructure and health. Dirks and her students have researched the barriers to cycling in Auckland, in comparison to a similar study done ten years prior. 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. The levels of microplastics in Auckland were much higher than those found in other major cities around the world. Dirks has also looked at how exposure to noise affects health and wellbeing.

Dirks is a member of the Te Manahua New Zealand Universities Women in Leadership Programme working group.