Melinda Jane Kellogg, also known as Mindy Kellogg, is a distinguished physicist and academic.
Her career is marked by significant contributions to both condensed matter physics and observational astrophysics.
🎓 Academic Background and Research
- Ph.D.: She holds a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
- Research Areas: Her research has explored areas such as:
- Excitonic superfluidity.
- Properties of high-redshift galaxies.
- Bilayer two-dimensional electron systems at very low temperature, culminating in the possible discovery of a new type of superfluid.
- Observational Work: She has worked as an observer on major telescopes, including the Keck 10-meter telescope and the Palomar Mountain’s Hale 200-inch telescope.
💼 Career History
- Academic: Her experience includes:
- Teaching physics and astronomy courses as a Physics professor at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise. Serving on Faculty Senate.
- Serving as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the MIT-Harvard Center for UltraCold Atoms.
- Working as a Teaching Assistant at Caltech.
- She is currently retired from physics.
🏆 Awards and Honors
She has received numerous prestigious awards, including:
- University of California Regents Scholarship (which covered all living expenses and tuition at UCSB).
- National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship.
- Caltech’s Stemple Prize in Physics.
- Everhart Distinguished Graduate Student Lecture Award.
personal life and hardships
- Early Life and Work: She experienced a period of personal hardship, being very poor from 1981 (after high school) until 1989 (when she won her full scholarship to UCSB), often struggling to afford food. She worked a variety of jobs during this time, including:
- Snack bar attendant at a bowling alley.
- Working at pizza parlors (Godfather’s Pizza, Pizza Hut).
- Waitressing at Pizza Hut, Bob’s Big Boy, and Drowsy Maggie’s (a folk-music restaurant).
- Working the graveyard shift at Denny’s.
- Veganism/Vegetarianism: She went vegetarian when she was nineteen and is still a vegetarian 43 years later.
- Dance: Dance was her great passion in life, and she danced from age 12 until age 26, studying ballet, jazz, tap, and modern dance.
- Marriage: She has been married to bestselling author Richard Bach since 2020. She manages his books, including Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah. She was previously married from 1993 to 1996 to a fellow physics major she met at UCSB.