The Charles F. Richter Early Career Award
The Charles F. Richter Early Career Award honors outstanding contributions to the goals of the Society by a member early in her or his career. No more than one Richter Award may be given each calendar year. The Richter award is presented at the annual meeting following the year of the award.
Call for Nominations
Nominee Criteria
A nominee must satisfy the following criteria: (1) Regular or Honorary Member of the Society in good standing, (2) the most recent academic degree must have been awarded no more than six years prior to 18 April of the year that she or he is selected for the award, and (3) not more than 40 years old on 18 April of the year that she or he is selected for the award. (18 April, of course, is the anniversary of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.)
Nomination Procedure
Any member of the SSA who is not on the Richter Award Subcommittee may nominate a candidate for the Richter Award. A nomination package must be submitted to the Secretary of the Society at the address below no later than 15 February of each year. The package should contain (1) a letter of nomination no more than 2 pages long summarizing the nominee's significant accomplishments, (2) a curriculum vitae including bibliography, (3) 2 - 4 supporting letters no more than 2 pages long, at least 2 letters of which must come from individuals not currently employed at the nominee's current institution or the institution from which the nominee received her or his most recent degree, and (4) an eligible birth date and date of degree. 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 Goran Ekstrom, chair of the Richter Award Subcommittee <ekstrom [at] ldeo [dot] columbia [dot] edu>.
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 text, .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 Charles F. Richter Early Career Award Recipients
2008: Miaki Ishii
This award was presented to Miaki Ishii, Harvard University, at the 2009 annual meeting in Monterey, CA. In her young career, Ishii, an assistant professor of earth and planetary science at Harvard University, has made two groundbreaking discoveries in geophysics that have fostered intense debate and subsequent research that has changed the understanding of deep Earth seismology.
Since she entered Harvard to begin her doctoral work in the late 1990s, Ishii has shown a knack for answering big questions. Shortly after her arrival at Harvard, she researched the driving force behind plate tectonics -- lateral variations in mantle density. The research inferred that the slowest parts of the lowermost mantle are denser than average, rather than lighter as most had assumed. The findings flew in the face of the long-held theory of a homogenized mantle and generated significant subsequent research and debate. Recent research is beginning to confirm Ishii’s observations.
Her second groundbreaking find built on her previous study with Harvard’s Adam Dziewonski. Ishii discovered what is now known as the “innermost inner core,” a region 300 kilometers in radius at the center of the Earth that has anisotropic properties distinct from the rest of the inner core.
In addition to her research, Ishii is known for her diligence and has shown a talent for presenting her research well -- a talent that earned her Student Paper Awards from the American Geophysical Union in 1998 and 1999.
2006: Jeanne Hardebeck
This award was presented to Jeanne Hardebeck, USGS, Menlo Park, at the 2007 annual meeting. The Richter Committee noted that, "Hardebeck's contributions to seismological research have been aimed at the central issues in earthquake studies including especially the state of stress and the strengths of faults, problems that have been persistently clouded by speculation and poor quality data. We are highly impressed by her innovative, insightful and unusually thorough work. Her accomplishments include the development of new investigative methods, such as better ways to determine focal mechanisms and stress orientation, methods that have been adopted by others in the seismic community, including people who are themselves experts in such analysis.
In addition, Jeanne Hardebeck's career is notable for her work on practical problems such as fault structure in the Bay Area and the careful USGS investigation following the San Simeon earthquake. Jeanne works well in collaboration with others and often takes intellectual leadership . She is also an excellent speaker, and has stood her ground on a number of strongly debated issues."
2005: Emily Brodsky
Dr. Emily Brodsky of the University of California, Santa Cruz, has been selected to be the first winner of the Charles F. Richter Early Career Award.
The Richter committee was impressed by the breadth and innovative aspects of Emily Brodsky's research, which is broadly focused on elucidating "how earthquakes, volcanoes and landslides work." She is cited for contributions to (1) earthquake triggering and distant effects of earthquakes, (2) rectified diffusion theory, and (3) fault lubrication theory (fluid pressurization). In her approach to these topics she has been taking full advantage of her strength in physics and fluid mechanics to understand the dynamic processes involved in these systems. For example, she has focused on understanding the nonlinear response of the crust to dynamic stress changes caused by the passage of seismic waves, to account for remotely triggered seismic, volcanic, and hydrologic activity. This is a very exciting and fruitful area, and she is already one of the dominant researchers in this field. She nicely complements theoretical work with data analysis and observational constraints. Only 5 years past her PhD at the time of her selection, she had published 13 papers, 6 as first author.
Emily Brodsky is unusually engaged in science. She takes on challenging projects, presents innovative and sometimes controversial hypotheses, and seeks debate in which she is eager to evaluate and consider any challenges to her initial ideas. Emily Brodsky is a worthy and exceptional young scientist who is a fitting first recipient of the Charles F. Richter Early Career Award.