18 May 2026—In an ongoing effort to support and promote the outstanding work of SSA student members, the Society is pleased to present seven students with a 2026 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 2026 Annual Meeting in Pasadena, California, from 14-18 April.
A three-person judging panel selected the recipients based upon a 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.
2026 Recipients
Silvia Beretta
University of Bologna
“A Contribution to the Assessment of DAS Performance With Surface Waves: A Case-study From Northern Italy”
Aaradhya Bhandari
Southern Methodist University
“Seismological Overview of the Toppling of Easter Island Moai Statues Using Real and Synthetic Ground Motion Records”
Nathan Girmay
Stanford University
“Effects of Source Energy Radiation on the Orientation of Maximum Horizontal Ground Motion Intensity”
Linxuan Li
California Institute of Technology
“Ubiquitous Interactions and Subcritical Patches Explain the Irregularity of Repeating Earthquakes”
Ellie Meyer
Tufts University
“Using ‘Did You Feel It?’ Data to Map Spatially Variable Site Amplification in the Central and Eastern United States”
Taiga Morioka
University of California, San Diego
“Examining Swarm and Foreshock Behavior in Tiny Earthquakes Resolved by Nodal Arrays around the San Jacinto Fault in Southern California”
Matt Parker
University of Canterbury
“Can Sackungen in Arthur’s Pass Record Past Large Earthquakes?”