Advancing earthquake science worldwide
This category is for the At Work column
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 »
17 June 2021–Kristine Pankow’s Ph.D. research involved subduction zones—specifically, modeling shear wave structure of a subducting slab off the eastern coast of Russia. But when she began looking for jobs after receiving the degree, an offer from the University of Utah Seismograph Stations turned her sights further inland. “This was … Continue Reading »