The Frank Press Public Service Award
The Frank Press Public Service Award award honors outstanding contributions to the advancement of public safety or public information relating to seismology. This award may be given to any individual, combination of individuals, or organization. No more than one Public Service Award may be given each calendar year. The Public Service Award is presented at the annual meeting following the year of the award.
Call for Nominations
Nomination Procedure
Any member of the SSA may nominate a candidate for this award. A nomination package must be submitted to the Secretary of the Society at the address below no later than 15 February. The nominations package should contain a letter of nomination no more than 2 pages long summarizing the nominee's significant accomplishments and 2 - 4 supporting letters no more than 2 pages long. At least one supporting letter should be written by an SSA member. If an individual is being nominated, a curriculum vitae or biography is advisable, but not required. Please note that the principal nominator should integrate the nomination letters and send ONE nomination package to ensure that all letters of endorsement reach the decision makers on time. Questions may be directed to Mary Lou Zoback, Chair of the Frank Press Public Service Award Subcommittee <marylou.zoback [at] rms [dot] com>.
Nominations for all SSA awards are solicited from the members to be sent to the SSA Secretary, by the due date of 15 February. Electronic submissions should be e-mailed in .TXT, .PDF or .DOC files to <awards [at] seismosoc.org>. While electronic submissions are encouraged, hard copies may be mailed to:
Secretary, Seismological Society of America
c/o Susan Newman
201 Plaza Professional Building
El Cerrito, California 94530
Fax: +1-510-525-7204
The Frank Press Public Service Award Recipients
2008: David Wald
The Frank Press Public Service Award was presented to David Wald at the 2009 annual meeting in Monterey, CA. Wald serves as a research scientist at the United States Geological Survey in Golden, CO, as well as an adjunct professor at Colorado School of Mines.
Throughout his career, Wald has expanded the reach and application of seismic data through development of widely-used programs such as ShakeMap and “Did You Feel It?” In addition to furthering seismic research, Wald’s work has ensured the efficient spread of earthquake information to first responders and government officials and aided countless others touched by earthquake disasters.
Wald’s advancements have made it possible for organizations and governments to disperse resources in an effective manner and make critical decisions in the minutes following an earthquake. Until a decade ago, rapid information about damaging earthquakes was limited to magnitude and location data, neither of which was much help to the public or emergency responders. The 1994 Northridge earthquake and the 1989 National Seismic System Science Plan prompted Wald and others to create ShakeMap, a program that provides near-real-time maps of ground motion and shaking intensity following significant earthquakes
The tool has become invaluable to humanitarian responders and organizations such as the Los Angeles Unified School District, FEMA and PG&E, all of whom rely on ShakeMap data. To date, more than 70,000 individuals receive ShakeMap alerts in California, Washington, Utah, Hawaii, Nevada and Alaska.
Following the success of ShakeMap, Wald next turned his attention to rectifying the poor quality and slow production of maps of shaking intensity, which had previously been constructed from mailings to postmasters. Drawing on the power and interactivity of the Internet, Wald created, “Did You Feel It?” to help researchers gain a better understanding of what occurred during an earthquake. Members of the public log on to provide detailed observations of an earthquake experience, which is translated into maps that continuously update as information is received. Wald’s advances also have allowed researchers to reassess historical earthquakes using intensity data.
“Did You Feel It?” allows members of the public to contribute to science by turning anxiety and unease into usable scientific data. The system has been a hit not only in California but also in other less earthquake-prone areas. In 2003, an earthquake of magnitude 4.6 in Alabama brought 17,000 submissions alone. More than 1 million people across the globe have contributed observations thanks to Wald’s work.
Wald’s dedication to improving the information available to responders and the public has paid dividends in major disasters around the world. Along with Paul Earle, Wald launched the Prompt Assessment of Global Earthquakes for Response (PAGER) system, which estimates the number of people subjected to levels of ground shaking within 30 minutes of an earthquake anywhere around the globe. The advancement has enabled humanitarian organizations to provide quick and appropriate responses to disasters.
PAGER includes an estimate of the impact an earthquake may have on populated areas, providing a valuable first estimate that allows organizers to know how much assistance is needed in an affected area. Previously, responders relied on reports to filter in, which could take several hours or days. PAGER was particularly useful after a magnitude 8.0 earthquake struck the coastal areas of Peru in 2007. Within minutes, PAGER estimated that hundreds of thousands of people had experienced shaking and notified the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster about the severity of the earthquake and the response needed.
In addition to his public work, Wald has been a prolific researcher and mentor of students and postdoctoral fellows first at Caltech, and now at the Colorado School of Mines where he is an adjunct professor. His research also is widely cited by seismologists around the world. The Science Citation’s 1993-2003 compilation of most cited authors in earthquake science ranked Wald sixth in the world out of 9,000 authors from 100 countries included in the survey.
2005: Frank Press
To honor his lifetime of exemplary public service, the SSA Board
has awarded the Society's first Public Service Award to Frank Press, a Director
of the Washington Advisory Group in Washington, D.C.
Prof. Press began as a seismologist at Columbia (PhD 1949) and joined the faulty of CalTech in 1955. Three years later he was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences for his scientific contributions in a number of areas including earthquake seismology, seismic-wave propagation, crust and mantle structure, and lunar constitution. He became Director of the CalTech Seismo Lab in 1957, and in 1965 he moved to MIT as Chair of the Department of Geology and Geophysics.
Recognition of Prof. Press's scientific leadership soon led to calls for public service, which he answered, joining President Kennedy's Science Advisory Committee. "Between 1959 and 1963, he represented the United States at four nuclear-test ban conferences in Geneva and Moscow, where seismological monitoring of atomic tests was a key issue. In this assignment he showed consummate skill in handling critical negotiations with formidable adversaries," stated Milton Dobrin.
Prof. Press served as the nation's Science Advisor and Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) under President Carter from 1977 to 1980. According to Don Kennedy, Editor of Science Magazine and head of the FDA under Carter, "Frank continued the tradition of strong interaction between President's Science Advisor and the Office of Management and Budget in constructing sound science budgets. Unlike some other Science Advisors, Frank maintained good access to the President and at the same time maintained strong ties and interaction with the science community."
Immediately following his tenure as Carter's Science Advisor, Prof. Press served from 1981-1993 as President of the National Academy of Sciences and Chairman of their operating arm, the National Research Council. Prof. Press is only one of twenty National Academy presidents in the Academy's 152 year history and the only seismologist. He is the only American to have served as both a Presidential Science Advisor and President of the NAS. As President of the NAS, Prof. Press put considerable effort into strengthening the reputation and visibility of the NAS in its mandated role to advise the federal government on scientific and technical matters.
During his tenure leading the Academy, Press spoke out on the need for improved science education in the United States and on a number of science policy issues including non-proliferation and better public understanding of science. To draw attention to the value of science research to the nation, he led an effort to define (and hence be able to track) the Federal investment in science. The Federal Science and Technology (FS&T) budget concept was later adopted by OMB in their analyses and thus provided a basis for a national dialog on this investment. Prof. Press worked to be sure that the U.S. scientific enterprise could fund large-scale collaborative research efforts --such as mapping the human genome—and at the same time maintaining strong funding for creative "individual investigator" research programs.
Throughout his career Prof. Press has championed the development and application of seismology to the pressing problems of humanity. He played key leadership roles in the establishment of numerous highly successful programs including the International Geophysical Year, the World Wide Standardized Seismographic Network, National Earthquake Hazard Reduction Program and the International Decade for Natural Hazard Reduction.
During his long career of scientific leadership and public service, Prof. Press remained committed to science education. He has authored some of the most popular introductory Earth Science college texts in the country, "Earth" (1974, 1986 with Siever), and "Understanding Earth" with Siever, (1998, 2000, 2002) and with additional coauthors, Grotzinger and Jordan, (2003).
The reach of Prof. Press's international impact is indicated by his election to fellowship in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Royal Astronomical Society, the Royal Society (London), the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Academie des Sciences (France). His awards include:
- the U.S. National Medal of Sciences (1994), the Nation's highest honor for scientific achievement "For his contributions to the understanding of the deepest interior of the earth and the mitigation of natural disasters, and his service in academia, as a government official, and at the National Academy of Sciences."
- the Vannevar Bush Award in 1994 given each year since 1980 by the National Science Foundation to persons who contributed most "toward the welfare of mankind and the nation".
- the Pupin Medal from Columbia University in 1993, recognizing "distinguished service to the nation in science and education."
- the Japan Prize from the Emperor in 1993 for his contributions to the "development of modern seismology and advancement of international cooperation in disaster science."
Prof. Press remains involved and engaged in the national scientific enterprise to this day. Recognizing the value in understanding earth deformational processes and the potential for a predictive capability, Prof. Press was an early and effective advocate for deployment of a dense array of continuous GPS recorders in a seismically hazardous region. The resulting 250-station Southern California Integrated GPS Network (SCIGN) served as the prototype for EarthScope's Plate Boundary Observatory (PBO), and significantly, it allowed the U.S. to remain on the cutting edge in taking advantage of new space-based technologies.
In view of his lifelong service to the people of the United States and the world, Frank Press is a fitting recipient for the first Public Service Award of the SSA.