Núria Pilar Calvet Cuni (born 1950) is a Venezuelan astronomer who studies star formation and the evolution of protoplanetary disks around young stars. She is Helen Dodson Prince Collegiate Professor of Astronomy at the University of Michigan.[1] She was the first woman to work as a professional astronomer in Venezuela.[2]
Calvet was born in Caracas in 1950. After study at the Central University of Venezuela, she earned a bachelor's degree from the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 1973. She continued her studies at the University of California, Berkeley, earning a master's degree in 1975 and completing her Ph.D. in 1981.[2] Her dissertation was Model atmospheres for T Tauri stars.[3]
She worked for the Centro de Investigaciones de Astronomia in Venezuela from 1981 to 1997, becoming vice president of the center.[2] Next, she became an astronomer at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. She moved to her present position at the University of Michigan in 2005.[4]
Calvet was a 1987 recipient of the Lorenzo Mendoza Fleury Science Prize, the highest level private-sector science award of Venezuela.[5] She was the first woman to receive this award.[2]