Advancing earthquake science worldwide
This category is for the At Work column
18 January 2022–For as long as Alicia Hotovec-Ellis can remember, she’s had “three core pieces of identity,” she said. “I like to draw, my favorite color is fire, and I want to be a scientist when I grow up.” She spent hours during her college days writing and illustrating a … Continue Reading »
15 December 2021–The plan was to become a lawyer, says James Kaklamanos, recalling his early years as an undergraduate. But an interest in math and science, and encouraging science mentors at Tufts University, soon had him wondering if law school was really in his future. The Sumatra earthquake and tsunami … Continue Reading »
3 November 2021–Seismic hazard analyses may use ergodic ground motion models—a sort of “average” based on global data about ground motion—or non-ergodic models, which incorporate more local and regional data on seismic source and nearby geologic structures. Having that site-specific analysis can make a big difference, as consulting seismologist Gilead … Continue Reading »
20 September 2021–Growing up in the mountains in China, Songqiao “Shawn” Wei never saw the ocean until he was 23, flying over the Pacific from Beijing to San Francisco for an American Geophysical Union meeting. “But when I was a kid I liked the sea, from books and movies, and … Continue Reading »
16 August 2021–Earthquakes are happening all the time inside Louisa Brotherson’s lab. Tiny ones, at least—and the strike-slip faults involved occur in Perspex plastic, not rock. Using a machine called a triaxial deformation apparatus, Brotherson can apply different pressures and stresses on the plastic to mimic the conditions that lead … Continue Reading »
15 July 2021–For Amir Salaree, the road to studying tsunamis began when he was a physics major at the University of Tehran, “looking for simple, real-world applications of all the beautiful math and physics that I was learning which would be useful to people,” he recalled. Visiting a friend in … Continue Reading »