John (Bob) Kelty, electronic shop manager for the Department of Physics and Astronomy, is retiring after 36 years at UNL. The event is free and open to the public and there is a presentation scheduled for 2:30 p.m.

Kelty received his bachelors, masters, and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering from UNL. In his initial years with the Department, most Electronics Shop work entailed design, construction, and repair of specialized electronic components. The advent of the personal computer brought huge changes to the role of the Electronics Shop, and now a large share of the work involves repair and updating of computer hardware and software and interfacing computers to experiments. He also taught electrical and electronics circuits to physics undergraduates for many years.

Kelty conducted research in polar ice sampling probes, including updating borehole logging systems with microprocessors and logging the deep boreholes in the Antarctic and Greenland. Most recently, Kelty has been involved in the Phase-I upgrades for the CMS experiment which is located at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.

He is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society.