Stephen J. Mackwell

Stephen J. Mackwell is a researcher in geophysics, specializing in laboratory-based studies of the physical, chemical and mechanical properties of geological materials. He is also interested in the transport of fluid components in mantle and crustal rocks on the microscopic and macroscopic scales, and on the effects of such components on mechanical properties. He has authored or co-authored over 80 articles in international scientific journals and is an editor of a book on comparative climatology of terrestrial planets published by the University of Arizona Press.

Education
Stephen J. Mackwell received a B.Sc. in Physics and Mathematics in August 1978 at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. He continued his studies at the University of Canterbury and earned his M.Sc. in Physics in August 1979. His master's thesis was titled "Excitation Temperatures for Late Type Stars." He went on to receive his Diploma of Education at Christchurch Teachers College in New Zealand in November 1979. He earned his Ph.D. in Geophysics in March 1985 from the Research School of Earth Sciences of the Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. His dissertation was titled "Diffusion and Weakening Effects of Water in Quartz and Olivine."

Early career
Stephen J. Mackwell worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, from 1984 to 1987, and then moved to the Pennsylvania State University in University Park, Pennsylvania, as an assistant professor in 1987 and subsequently associate professor of geosciences in 1992. He was program director for geophysics in the Earth Sciences Division at the National Science Foundation in Washington, D.C., from 1993 to 1994, and spent 1996 as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the Bayerisches Geoinstitut in Bayreuth, Germany. In 1998, Mackwell became a full professor for experimental geophysics at the Bayerisches Geoinstitut at the University of Bayreuth. In January 2000 he was appointed director of the Bayerisches Geoinstitut and served there until December 2002.

Director of the Lunar and Planetary Institute
Mackwell returned to the United States in late 2002 as director of the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI) in Houston, Texas, a division of the Universities Space Research Association (USRA). In addition, Mackwell managed USRA's Houston facility and education programs including the NASA Internships Program and the Air Force Research Laboratory Intern Program. In 2016, Louise Prockter became the Director of the LPI, and Mackwell was named as the USRA Corporate Director of Science Programs.

Mackwell has served on the editorial board of several planetary science journals, including serving as editor-in-chief for the journal Geophysical Research Letters from 2002 to 2004. He served on the advisory board for the journal Physics and Chemistry of Minerals from 1996 to 2004. Mackwell has participated in the 2013–2022 Planetary Science Decadal Survey Steering Group and Inner Planets Panel. Since 2018, he is a member of the Space Studies Board, Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences, of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Mackwell has been an adjunct professor in the Department of Earth Science at Rice University in Houston, Texas since 2005, and in the Department of Earth Science at the University of Minnesota since 2021.

American Institute of Physics
From February 2019 until June 2021, Mackwell served as the Deputy Executive Officer of the American Institute of Physics in College Park, MD.

National Science Foundation
From April 2022 to the present, Mackwell serves as the Section Head for Disciplinary Programs in the Division of Earth Sciences of the Geosciences Directorate at the National Science Foundation in Alexandria, VA.

Honors
Stephen J. Mackwell has been named Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2017; Fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 2010; Stipendiat der Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung in Bayreuth, Germany in 1996; Ministère de L'Education Nationale, Academie de Lille, Nommé Professeur in 1996; and Fellow of the Mineralogical Society of America in 1996.

In 2016, Mackwell was honored by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) with the naming of main-belt asteroid 5292 Mackwell (formerly designated as 1991 AJ1).

Hitoshi Shiozawa and Minoru Kizawa originally discovered asteroid 5292 Mackwell on January 12, 1991, in Fujieda, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. 5292 Mackwell has an absolute magnitude of 11.9 and is part of the main asteroid belt, which is located between the orbits of planets Mars and Jupiter.