16 May 2025—In an ongoing effort to support and promote the outstanding work of SSA student members, the Society is pleased to present 12 students with a 2025 Student Presentation Award.
The SSA awards program seeks to highlight excellent student presentations (poster or oral) at the SSA Annual Meeting. Each of the recipients listed below were nominated by attendees at the 2025 Annual Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland (14-18 April). A three-person judging panel selected them based upon an absolute standard of excellence and criteria developed by the Student Presentation Subcommittee of the Honors Committee.
Additionally, each recipient was required to be registered as a student and be a student member of SSA in good standing.
2025 Recipients
Zohreh Abbasi Hafshejani
University of Memphis
“Does the Mississippi Embayment Edge Have Any Effect on Site Amplification?”
Isaac Bauer
University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
“Evaluating Synthetic Acoustic Waveforms From Fire Sources Using 3D Finite Difference Method”
Jimmy Bradford
University of Arizona
“Investigating Along-strike Differences in Crust and Upper Mantle Structure of the Central Andes Through High-resolution Receiver Functions”
Kristen Chiama
Harvard University
“Insights From 3D DEM Models Into Along-strike Variability of Ground Surface Ruptures Observed in Thrust and Reverse Fault Earthquakes”
Sangwoo Han
Seoul National University
“Determining Small Earthquake Focal Mechanisms Using 360° S-wave Polarization”
Savvas Marcou
Berkeley Seismological Laboratory
“Exploring the Utility of Earthquake Spectra Collected From Smartphones for Ground-motion Modeling”
M. Morow Tan
University of Colorado Boulder
“Towards an InSAR Catalog of Creep Events on the Imperial Fault”
Simone Probst
ETH Zurich
“Studying the Coupling of Unburied Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) for Lunar Seismology”
Cherilyn Toro Acosta
University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez
“High and Low Noise Models for Geophone Deployments: Toward Global Monitoring Capabilities”
Ayako Tsuchiyama
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
“Intermediate-depth Earthquakes Driven by Migrating Strain Localization in the Bucaramanga Earthquake Nest”
Jeena Yun
Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD
“How Did the 2016 Mw 7.8 Kaikōura Earthquake Affect the Megathrust Earthquake Potential in the Hikurangi Subduction Zone?”
Maia Zhang
Nevada Seismological Laboratory, University of Reno
“Insights Into the 2020 Monte Cristo Range Earthquake Sequence From a Near-source Aftershock Deployment”