At Work: Ruth Harris

Ruth Harris at 2023 SSA Annual Meeting

19 July 2023–Like all scientific disciplines, seismology is not immune to trends. And right now, creeping faults are having a bit of a moment, according to Ruth Harris. The topic is a long-time research interest of Harris, a Senior Scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Earthquake Science Center and president … Continue Reading »

At Work: Greg McLaskey

Greg McLaskey in lab

19 June 2023–Interested in math and science early on, and looking for a job that would benefit society, Greg McLaskey went to college to study civil engineering. “The thing that excited me the most about civil engineering was non-destructive testing,” he recalled, so he was soon learning all about wave … Continue Reading »

At Work: Simona Gabrielli

Simona Gabrielli at Mount St. Helens

22 May 2023–Simona Gabrielli studies seismic attenuation, or what happens when a seismic wave interacts with its surrounding medium. She compares it to how a stone dropped into a pond sends ripples through the water, and the ripples change direction depending on what they meet as they move across the … Continue Reading »

At Work: Wasja Bloch

Wasja Bloch in snow

14 April 2023–As he studied subduction zone seismicity, Wasja Bloch noticed that water was sometimes used as a wild card when it came to explaining what lays below these complex tectonic plate margins. “If people do interpretations of subsurface images and something’s odd, they sometimes pull the ‘fluid joker,’” Bloch … Continue Reading »

At Work: Kevin Ward

Kevin Ward standing at the top of a hill

6 March 2023–As a non-traditional student, Kevin Ward went back to school “not even clear that I was going back for anything in the geosciences,” he said. “I kind of stumbled upon it when I was taking general ed classes.” “I was always good at math and physics, but then … Continue Reading »

At Work: Paul Friberg

Paul Friberg in a field of yellow flowers

3 February 2023–Twenty-five years ago this month, Paul Friberg and his partner Sidney Hellman started their own company. At the time, they were working on seismology software for IRIS-PASSCAL at its Instrument Center at Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, when IRIS announced a move to consolidate its instrument centers in New … Continue Reading »