Justin Brown

Have you ever considered being a seismologist?

My personal journey towards a career in seismology began as a physics major at the University of Wisconsin. There I gained exposure to the field of seismology and had an opportunity to participate in research with my academic advisor. However, my horizons and opportunities were expanded even further after being accepted into the IRIS Undergraduate Internship Program to conduct seismological research during the summer of my sophomore year.

Non-volcanic tremor is a weak, extended duration seismic signal observed episodically on some major faults, often in conjunction with slow slip events. Such tremor may hold the key to understanding fundamental processes at the deep roots of faults, and could signal times of accelerated slip and hence increased seismic hazard. Since the discovery of deep, non-volcanic tremor many studies have attempted to locate it and understand its origin; however, tremor has proven difficult to study due to the lack of impulsive wave arrivals, such as those used to locate and constrain the mechanism of ordinary earthquakes. My current work at Stanford focuses on extracting low frequency earthquakes from Non-volcanic tremor in order to gain a precise idea of the mechanics of tremor and slow slip on faults prone to large ruptures.

2004 Internship Alumnus & PhD Student at Stanford University, School of Earth Science

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Louanne Christopher

Opening up Earth with geophysics and seismology

Have you ever looked at the picture of Earth’s glowing, molten interior and wondered – “How do they know that is what it looks like?”
Well, the answer is seismology. As an undergraduate physics student at Morgan State University, participating in research on coal samples and meteorites I had not given any thought to a career involving seismology. However, as graduation drew closer, I wondered what careers I could pursue with a physics degree. I was advised to consider geophysics and applied to and was accepted into the he IRIS Undergraduate Internship program. That first foray into seismology “opened up the world to me” by giving me the opportunity to use seismic tomography to image mantle upwellings 8-10 km below the surface (5-7 miles) and propose mechanisms for magma delivery.

Now as a geophysicist for a major oil company, I create images of Earth’s interior from the surface 5 to 6 km (tens of thousands of feet). We generate three-dimensional (3-D) images of buried salt domes, turbidite sand flows, underwater river channels and prehistoric carbonate reefs. These critical images allow us to thread drill pipe thousands of feet to recover the hydrocarbons that fuel our lives and the economy. Seismology provides the x-ray vision to help us ‘see’ the prize buried deep in the subsurface and even miles below the seafloor. Advances in seismic research, like time-lapse (4-D) seismic and continuous seismic monitoring, allow us to record real-time changes in fluid content in the subsurface. This is truly applied physics!

2003 Program Alumnus & Development Geophysicist, Chevron North America Exploration and Production

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