Diego Melgar

Ann & Lew Williams Chair of Earth Sciences
Associate Professor

B.E. Geophysics, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
M.S. Geophysics, Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Ph.D. Geophysics, Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Sydney Dybing

Ph.D. Student

B.S Geophysics, Washington University in Saint Louis
Sydney is working on using ML for characterizing large earthquakes. She also uses borehole strainmeters to observe the nascent stages of earthquake rupture. Ultimately the goal is to evaluate whether there is any determinism to rupture and develop methods of speeding up earthquake early warning system

Sean Santellanes

Ph.D. Student

B.S Geophysics, University of Texas at Austin
​M.S Meteorology, Pennsylvania State University
Sean is currently researching global tsunami events and looking at recordings of tsunami noise in the open ocean. We think this can be used to estimate hotspots of coastal tsunami amplification

 David Small

Ph.D. Student (co-advised with Doug Toomey)

B.S Geophysics, University of California Santa Cruz
David is researching how geodetic coupling models can inform forecasts of large earthquake ruptures. He also studies how paleoseismic evidence of tsunami inundation can be used to determine slip patterns of past earthquakes

Yu-Sheng Sun

Ph.D. Student (co-advised with Amanda Thomas)

B.S Geophysics, National Central University, Taiwan
M.S.Geophysics, National Central University, Taiwan
Yu-Sheng is working on earthquake source processes with a special emphasis on kinematic slip inversion techniques. He is also working on modeling slow slip events and using ML denoising techniques to search for small-scale transients in GNSS data

Margarita Solares

Ph.D. Student 

B.S Geography, Universidad de Puerto Rico Mayaguez
M.S.Geology, Universidad de Puerto Rico Mayaguez
Margarita is helping to develop GNSS based tsunami warning techniques in collaboration with GNS science in New Zealand. She also researches new multi-data non-linear slip inversion techniques with an emphasis on earthquakes in Puerto Rico

Ayumu Mizutani

Postdoc

Ph.D. Hokkaido University
Ayumu researches how to utilize seafloor sensors such as absolute pressure and traditional seismometry to measure ground motion. He combines different sensor types using data fusion techniques and uses them with numerical modeling to study earthquake and tsunami source processes

Alumni

Oluwaseun Fadugba

Postdoc (2021-2023, co-advised with Valerie Sahakian)
Now hazards modeler at Verisk

Oluwaseun researched the impacts of real 3D Earth Structure in modeling high-rate GNSS waveforms. He used advanced high-performance computing techniques to produce detailed simulations of time-dependent crustal deformation to show how real Earth structure impacts forward and inverse modeling of great subduction zone earthquakes

Jiun-ting Lin

Ph.D. (2017-2022, co-advised with Amanda Thomas)
Now a postdoc at Lawrence Livermore National Lab

At the UO Jiun-ting worked on  on machine learning and high-rate GNSS displacement data for earthquake early warning applications. He built the M-LARGE algorithm that uses complex crustal deformation patterns to rapidly characterize earthquakes and their hazards. He has also worked on source models of large earthquakes from joint inversion of many geophysical data and used ML techniques for identifying small-scale seismicity in the Cascadia Subduction zone

Zhang Hongcai

Visiting Researcher  (2020-2021) Chinese Earthquake Authority

Zhang Hongcai visited the UO to conduct early warning research. He developed a new technique to compute for unsaturated magnitudes from integrated strong motion records. He also developed a single station ML algorithm for ground motion forecasting. Working with Valerie Sahakian he carried out a residual decomposition analysis and found that ML improves the source and path terms of ground motion the most

Khurram Asslam

Postdoctoral Scholar  (2019-2021, co-advised with Amanda Thomas) 
​Now a Cat modeler at Berkshire Hathaway Specialty Insurance

At the UO Khurram worked on dynamic rupture models for large earthquakes. With Ph.D. student Jiun-Ting Lin he led a study of the 2018 Hawaii earthquake to show that there is significant overlap between regions of co-seismic slip and regions that have slow slip. He also led a paper that studied the connection between megathrust slip and activation of splay faults in the Cascadia subduction zone with an emphasis on tsunami hazards.

Dara Goldberg

Postdoctoral Scholar  (2019-2020) 
​Now a research geophysicist at the USGS National Earthquake Information Center

During her time at UO Dara worked on a combination of earthquake source observations and rupture modeling. She s researched the source process of the 2019 Ridgecrest, California sequence by combining seismic and space geodetic methods. She  also worked developing a modeling code for realistic broadband P-waves and strong ground motion which could be used for testing earthquake early warning systems
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Amy L. Williamson

Postdoctoral Scholar  (2018-2020) 
​Now researcher at the UC Berkeley Seismsology Lab

While at UO Amy worked on tsunami propagation problems trying to understand the relationship between the kinematics of rupture and its effects on inundation at the local coastlines. She also worked on a joint NASA/NOAA tsunami early warning project to bring local warning to the Cascadia Subduction Zone. An important question she tackled was quantifying how good a tsunami forecast can be in the first 1-2 minutes following an earthquake

Christine Ruhl

Postdoctoral Scholar  (2016-2018 co-advised with Richard Allen @ UC Berkeley)
​Now a hazards researcher at Verisk

Christine researched the performance of GNSS based earthquake early warning algorithms. Specifically she worked on the timeliness of ground motion predictions by studying a global database of large earthquakes recorded by near-field seismic and geodetic data.

Fernando Salazar Monroy

Visiting Ph.D. Student  (2018)

Fernando visited UO for 6 months from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. He worked on probabilistic tsunami hazard analysis for the Mexican subduction zone where earthquakes as large as M8.6 have been identified in the past.

Miriam Lizzeth Vazquez Camaal


Undergraduate IRIS intern  (2019)
Now Ph.D. student at UNAM

Lizzeth was an undergraduate intern who visited for 10 weeks from the Universidad del Mar in Oaxaca Mexico to do research as part of the IRIS internship program. Lizzeth studied the great 1787 M8.6 San Sixto earthquake in south central Mexico. This is the largest known earthquake on the Mexican subduction zone. Lizzeth generated over 500 hypothetical kinematic rupture models and modeled the ensuing tsunamis to understand the potential impacts of such a large event