All Global Travel Grant Recipients
Find the list of SSA Global Travel Grant recipients below. Learn more about the travel grant and application process here.
| Year | Grantee | Program | Location | Amount |
| July 2023 | Venkata Gangadhara Rao | EGU General Assembly 2024 | Vienna, Austria | $1,860 |
| July 2023 | Cassie Gann-Phillips | Geo-Congress 2024 | Vancouver, Canada | $1,700 |
| July 2023 | Leonardo Colavitti | RAUGM 2023 – Annual Meeting of Mexican Geophysical Union | Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico | $2,500 |
| July 2023 | Felix Rodriguez Cardozo | EGU General Assembly 2024 | Vienna, Austria | $2,500 |
| February 2023 | Ziqi (Evan) Zhang | 28th IUGG General Assembly | Berlin, Germany | $2,500 |
| February 2023 | Zoe Yin | FRINGE 2023 | Leeds, United Kingdom | $2,000 |
| February 2023 | Stacey Martin | 8th International Colloquium of Historical Earthquakes & Paleoseismology | Lixouri, Kefalonia Island, Greece | $2,500 |
| February 2023 | Kiran Pandey | 28th IUGG General Assembly | Berlin, Germany | $2,000 |
| July 2022 | Marc Garcia | National Diversity in STEM Conference | San Juan, Puerto Rico | $2,200 |
| July 2022 | Cristina Lorenzo-Velázquez | Latin American and Caribbean Seismological Commission IV ASSEMBLY | Quito, Ecuador | $1,800 |
| February 2022 | Jared Bryan | Passive Imaging & Monitoring in Wave Physics: From Seismology to Ultrasound | Cargèse, France | $2,463 |
| February 2022 | Claire Doody | EGU General Assembly 2022 | Vienna, Austria | $2,390 |
| February 2022 | Molly Gallahue | Sigma2 Closing Symposium | Avignon, France | $2,000 |
| February 2022 | Revathy Parameswaran | 2022 NISAR Science Community Workshop | Pasadena, California, USA | $1,800 |
| February 2022 | Xiaotao Yang | Volatiles from Source to Surface Workshop – A GeoPRISMS Synthesis Workshop | Bozeman, Montana, USA | $1,210 |
| July 2021 | Shanna Chu | Earthquakes: Nucleation, Triggering and Relationships with Aseismic Processes Workshop | Corsica, France | $1,600
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| July 2021 | Danielle Lindsay | Structure and Deformation at Plate Boundaries Workshop | Honolulu, Hawaii | $1,680 |
| July 2021 | Christina Tsarsitalidou | Passive Imaging and Monitoring in Wave Physics: From Seismology to Ultrasound Workshop | Corsica, France | $1,075 |
| February 2021 | Molly Gallahue | EGU General Assembly 2021 | Virtual | $150 |
| February 2020 | Piotr A. Bońkowski | 17th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering | Sendai, Japan | $2,500 |
| February 2020 | Ezgi Karasozen | General Assembly of the European Seismological Commission | Corfu, Greece | $1,975 |
| February 2020 | Karthik Reddy Sai Krishna Konala | 17th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering | Sendai, Japan | $1,175 |
| February 2020 | Chris Milliner | COMET Annual Meeting | Liverpool, United Kingdom | $1,100 |
| February 2020 | Erika Schiappapietra | 17th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering | Sendai, Japan | $1,950 |
| July 2019 | Waheed G. Akande | 8th International Conference of Seismology & Earthquake Engineering | Tehran, Iran | $1,424 |
| July 2019 | Jordan R. Caylor | International Symposium on Deep Seismic Profiling of the Continents and their Margins | Perth, Australia | $2,850 |
| July 2019 | Sofia Cubillos Gordillo | National Earthquake Conference | San Diego, California | $1,000 |
| July 2019 | Mohammadreza Jamalreyhani | International Conference on Earthquake Engineering and Seismology | Paris, France | $1,500 |
| July 2019 | Leah M. Salditch | International Colloquium on Historical Earthquakes & Paleoseismology Studies | Barcelona, Spain | $2,040 |
| February 2019 | Farnaz Kamranzad | 11th International Workshop on Statistical Seismology | Hakone, Japan | $1,200 |
| February 2019 | Angela G. Marusiak | Summer 2019 InSight Science Team Meeting | Paris, France | $1,325 |
| February 2019 | Nicolás Pinzón | XVII Colombian Congress of Geology and IV Explorer Symposium 2019 | Santa Marta, Colombia | $1,000 |
| February 2019 | Swasti Saxena | Structural Mechanics in Reactor Technology (SMiRT) 25 | Charlotte, North Carolina | $1,500 |
| February 2019 | Hema Sandeep Sharma | Passive Imaging & Monitoring in Wave Physics: From Seismology to Ultrasound | Cargèse, Corsica, France | $1,500 |
| July 2018 | Karen Pearson | 11th International Workshop on Statistical Seismology | Hakone, Japan | $1,450 |
| July 2018 | Kseniia Nepeina | 18th International Workshop on Seismic Anisotropy | Jerusalem, Israel | $1,000 |
| February 2018 | Rachel Hatch | Banff 2018 International Induced Seismicity Workshop | Alberta, Canada | $1,000 |
| February 2018 | Heather McFarlin | Cities on Volcanoes 10 | Naples, Italy | $2,000 |
| February 2018 | Nadine Reitman | 2018 Southern California Earthquake Center Annual Meeting | Palm Springs, California | $520 |
Stories from Global Travel Grant Recipients
Student and early-career members are invited to apply for SSA Global Travel Grants in February and July. The grants of up to $2,500 dollars (plus an additional $500 to help cover parents’ childcare costs) have already paid the way for dozens of SSA members to attend seismology-related conferences and workshops, in-person or virtual, hosted by other organizations worldwide.
As recipients like Molly Gallahue point out, the grants offer student and early-career members a helping hand over the financial obstacles that can stand in the way of attending conferences and making career-advancing connections in the wider scientific community.
Gallahue, a PhD candidate at Northwestern University, said that her Global Travel Grant, which took her to the SIGMA2 Closing Symposium conference in Avignon, France, at the end of May, also “took so much financial and logistical stress off myself, which cannot be underestimated with all the remaining complexities of international travel due to the pandemic.” The conference, her first outside North America, was also the smallest conference Gallahue had ever attended.
Read MoreGlobal Travel Grants…
Cassie Gann-Phillips, a recipient of the July 2023 SSA Global Travel Grant from North Carolina State, recently had the opportunity to attend Geo-Congress 2024 in Vancouver, Canada. After attending the conference, Cassie explained, “This Global Travel Grant represented an opportunity for me to share my research on regional seismic site amplification on an international level.” Global Travel Grants play a crucial role in enabling students and early-career scientists to participate in global scientific discourse.
For Cassie, attending Geo-Congress 2024 was more than just a chance to present her research; it was about forging connections. She stated, “Being able to attend Geo-Congress 2024 allowed me to make new connections with both researchers and practitioners in industry which I will be able to use in my future research endeavors.” She continued, “These connections are invaluable to me and also help me feel connected within the geotechnical earthquake engineering community.”
Presenting a poster at Geo-Congress 2024, Cassie, was a finalist in the blind student poster competition. She recalls, “Both the opportunity to discuss my research with others through my poster presentation, and the networking with geotechnical engineers and professors in academia were the most valuable aspects of attending Geo-Congress 2024.” Global Travel Grants enable SSA student and early-career members to share their scientific research across international borders, fostering global scientific collaboration. “I would recommend all of my colleagues to apply for the Global Travel Grant,” Cassie states. She continues, “so that they can have new international experiences and strengthen their relationships within their research communities.”
The SSA Global Travel Grant Sparks Progress
The SSA Global Travel Grant is a unique opportunity that helps SSA student and early career members travel to workshops and meetings anywhere in the world. Zoe Yin, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, traveled to the FRINGE 2023 conference in Leeds, United Kingdom this fall with the help of the Global Travel Grant.
“My research is focused on using SAR and InSAR to characterize and quantify ground deformations surrounding earthquake ruptures and I am particularly interested in some smaller, secondary fault activations that can happen away from the main coseismic rupture” explained Yin. “At the meeting,” she added, “I met several others who were interested in this same topic and were able to share insights from their research and give feedback and suggestions for my work.”
This grant isn’t just about travel; it’s about opening doors to knowledge, creating pathways for discovery, and connecting bright minds across continents. “This opportunity to network with those interested in these same niche topics, as well as the potential for future collaborations, will be exceedingly valuable in my future research and career,” explained Yin. She continued, “The support to attend this meeting via the Global Travel Grant is a testament to the SSA community and its investment in young scientists and the future of seismic hazard research and mitigation.”
Unlimited Possibilities with the SSA Global Travel Grant
Kiran Pandey, University of Memphis, traveled to IUGG in July 2023 with the aid of a Global Travel Grant. “My decision to attend the conference was motivated by my desire to network with prominent researchers in my field and investigate new research avenues,” Pandey says.
At the assembly, he presented his research and received feedback. “This constructive feedback has greatly improved the quality of my work and provided me with new insights,” says Pandey, who also appreciated the networking opportunities. “By interacting with other attendees, potential collaborators and eminent researchers, I established connections that could lead to future partnerships and the exchange of valuable knowledge,” he says.
In his research, Pandey has been using data from the GFZ Potsdam rock mechanics laboratory, not far from where the conference was held in Berlin, Germany. “Interacting with the collaborators and observing the lab’s experimental setup and cutting-edge apparatus was a worthy experience,” he says. “This firsthand experience enhanced my comprehension of the lab’s data and strengthened my relationships with the collaborators.”
Making Connections with a Global Travel Grant
“To me, the Global Travel Grant represents opportunities and possibilities – to share my work with the community, to learn the latest cutting-edge research, to expand my network and to broaden my horizons,” says Ziqi (Evan) Zhang, a graduate student at the University of Rochester, who attended IUGG 2023 in Berlin Germany with an SSA Global Travel Grant.
For Zhang, the assembly was more than a scientific conference; it was an opportunity to grow his network and make invaluable connections. “Being able to attend this meeting expands my professional network and has a great impact on my future research and career in academia” he says.
SSA Global Travel Grants are a unique opportunity for student and early-career scientists. “The SSA Global Travel Grant is perhaps the only student travel grant program that provides recipients with the resources to travel to any [seismology] conference around the world,” Zhang says. He adds, “It provides a great opportunity to communicate science and to expand professional networks on an international level.”
SSA Global Travel Grants Advance Careers and Earthquake Science
An invitation to submit a paper. International collaboration. Feedback from senior scientists.
These career-changing connections happen at scientific conferences. SSA’s Global Travel Grant gives more members the opportunity to enjoy them.
“The SSA Global Travel Grant is special among other grants,” says Leah Salditch, Northwestern University. “Not many professional societies provide you with the means to attend other meetings, especially ones in other countries.” It’s an opportunity to improve science, she adds, by “sharing [information] across political borders.”
In Fall 2019, Waheed Gbenga Akande, University of Aberdeen and Salditch, Northwestern University received Global Travel Grants to fund their travel to international scientific meetings: Akande to the 8th International Conference of Seismology and Earthquake Engineering in Iran and Salditch to the 7th International Colloquium on Historical Earthquakes & Paleoseismology Studies in Barcelona, Spain.
While there, Akande and Salditch had the opportunity to improve their research, to submit a paper to Seismological Research Letters and to collaborate internationally. To learn more, read the full article on how this grant has benefitted these two students.
Read MoreGetting a Fresh Perspective with a Global Travel Grant
Swasti Saxena, a graduate student at the University of Nevada, Reno, knows the excitement that precedes presenting her research before leaders in her field. At the 2019 Structural Mechanics in Reactor Technology (SMiRT) 25 conference, she was “starstruck” to find herself presenting in the same session as senior scientists Yousef Bozorgnia and Kenneth Campbell.
Saxena uses their equations in her research utilizing large-scale wavefield simulations to predict vertical ground motion and to improve the resilience of nuclear power plants. “To be presenting in the same session as them… Wow,” she says. “I was glad they presented before me, because I got to see them as humans, as people answering questions.”
Saxena says the experience wouldn’t have been possible without an SSA Global Travel Grant.
Read MoreStudent Attends Induced Seismicity Workshop With Help of Global Travel Grant
At first glance, an induced seismicity workshop might seem like an odd destination for Rachel Hatch, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Nevada, Reno.
Her interest in earthquakes started early, but it mostly revolved around seismic events with natural causes. She was born in San Francisco a month after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake that devastated the Bay Area, and for her master’s thesis she researched dynamically triggered earthquakes.
Now at the University of Nevada, Hatch studies small-to-moderate earthquakes in the Walker Lane tectonic region, a complex system of faults along the California and Nevada border that’s responsible for up to a quarter of all movement between the Pacific and North American plates, with the San Andreas Fault taking up the rest.
Read MoreGlobal Travel Grant Sends Student to Cities on Volcanoes 10 Conference in Italy
Heather McFarlin’s interest in volcanoes can be traced back to her father, who worked in hard rock drilling and loved science. This early exposure to geoscience followed her to the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where she majored in Geography.
“One of the very first homework assignments I had was to look up careers that seemed interesting and find out what it would take to get a job in the field,” McFarlin recalls.
Having always been fascinated by volcanoes, McFarlin looked up jobs that studied them.
“I wanted to work at an observatory monitoring volcanoes and help the people living nearby know what is going on in their environment,” she says. “One of the best ways to monitor a volcano is with seismic instruments, so I decided to become a volcano seismologist.”
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