Portrait of Wendy Calvin

Wendy Calvin, Ph.D.

Foundation Professor, Daniel A. and Edith E. O’Keefe Endowed Professor for the Mackay School

Summary

Dr. Calvin is a planetary scientist specializing in optical and infrared spectroscopy of minerals and ices. She uses remote sensing data sets, laboratory and field analysis to identify and map the surface composition of solid planets in the solar system, including Earth.

About the Daniel A. and Edith E. O’Keefe Endowed Professor for the Mackay School

Daniel Ashley O’Keefe, mining engineering, Class of 1942, passed away May 9, 1997. Daniel was born in Goldfield, Nevada on July 3, 1917. He attended high school in Round Mountain, NV. He moved to Reno in 1937 and graduated from Mackay in 1942. He worked throughout his life as a mining engineer and was the last General Manager of the Massachusetts-Nevada Mine. He was also a veteran of WWlI. In his later years he worked at the U.S. Bureau of Mines Research Center on the University of Nevada, Reno campus. Daniel married Edith (Bessie) E. Gregory, also a 1942 graduate of Nevada where she received her B.A. in economics. Daniel and Bessie, who died January 11, 1999, left an estate gift of over $1 million to be shared equally between the Mackay School of Mines and the College of Business.

Research interests

Mars surface alteration and polar processes, Earth as an analog for Mars, geothermal energy, terrestrial snow and ice.

Education

  • Ph.D. Geophysics, University of Colorado, Boulder, 1991
  • B.S. Physics/Math, University of Denver, 1983