Wayne Pennington, is a geophysicist, earthquake expert and Dean of the College of Engineering at Michigan Technological University. He has studied earthquakes in South America, Pakistan and Nepal.

As a Jefferson Science Fellow at the US Dept of State and the US Agency for International Development, he worked on a task force studying what needed to be done in Nepal to prepare for a big earthquake.

Pennington has served as the president of the American Geological Institute and as first vice president of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists.