In my former job, I developed seismic and acoustic data processing algorithms for various government customers. At Sandia, I ended up with a dedicated team of software engineers coding these up and delivering them as software tools for analysts. One thing I was particularly proud of were my global-search probabilistic location algorithms, which could provide …
I’m currently looking for a PhD student and Postdoc to support a project to develop advanced signal processing algorithms for processing seismic and acoustic data. You’ll help develop the next generation of data processing algorithms, advance our understanding of urban signals and noise, and develop industry-relevant skills in Python programming. I can support a graduate …
In July this year, I had the opportunity to give a lecture on arrays and networks in seismology for an online graduate student summer school run by the AGU Seismology Section. The lecture was one of a series of talks by various speakers on different aspects of seismology, all of which are being posted online …
I wasn’t planning to spend a part of my summer lugging equipment around backyards in my neighborhood, but I guess most people’s summers haven’t exactly been turning out how they expected! After exploring changes in seismic noise with COVID-19 restrictions, I got interested in learning more about urban noise. In particular, there seem to be …
While most seismometers have been installed to detect earthquakes, they are also very sensitive to ambient vibrations caused by human activity. A series of recent news reports have highlighted the change in background seismic vibrations (seismic ‘noise’) with the various government restrictions on human movement (see this link). Seismic stations in Dallas, many deployed following …
When earthquakes are large and shallow, they act like giant subwoofers, shaking the ground and making sound. I’ve got a bit of a long-standing interest when it comes to infrasound (low-frequency sound) from earthquakes from Utah. I wrote a paper 8 years ago on understanding the infrasound generated by an earthquake in Southern Utah. When …
A fundamental tenet of science is the ability to reproduce the results of an experiment. With the increasing tendency of scientific research to rely on chains of algorithms embedded in computer code, the way we communicate scientific research may need to be rethought. How we teach students to communicate is an important part of meeting …
A reproducability crisis in scientific communication? Read More »
My first blog post, and it’s a heavy topic! I’m teaching a class this semester on forensic seismology that explores issues of nuclear arms control. Earth Science plays a key role here, just as it does in the other major existential threat to humanity: Climate change. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists publish the Doomsday …
Existential threats to humanity, and the role of Earth Science Read More »