Workshops

The 2019 SSA Annual Meeting features five hands-on workshops on Tuesday, 23 April, made possible with support from the Kanamori Fund. All workshops start at 1 p.m. Pacific.

Sign up for any of the workshops when you register for the Annual Meeting.

Achieve Your Career Goals

Tuesday, 23 April 2019, 1:00–4:00 p.m.
Limit: 25 people

Registration includes the opportunity to meet one-on-one with the career counselor. Appointments will be available:
Tuesday, 23 April 2019, 4:30–6:30 p.m.
Wednesday, 24 April 2019, 7:30 a.m.–Noon

Description

Whether you’re a student or early-career scientist looking to advance your career, or an experienced researcher looking at getting back into the job market, learn how to create your dream career!

This three-hour workshop focuses on strategies and tactics to understand what you can, could and should be doing for your career. Topics include how to conduct a job search in academia, consulting or government agencies; the pros and cons of working in each sector; how potential employers find job seekers and other career-related questions.

Attendees will also have the chance to actively learn about and practice skills that can help them get a job and advance their careers, such as interview skills, having a polished social media presence and marketing their value.

Following the workshop, attendees have the opportunity of participating in one-on-one career consultations. These one-on-one sessions last approximately 30 minutes. Sign-ups for one-on-one sessions will be available first-come, first-serve through a separate registration form that will be sent to registered workshop attendees at a later date.

More Information

Instructor

Alaina Levine, Quantum Success Solutions

Registration

SSA Members: $50
Student / Early-Career Member: $35
Registration for this workshop is open to SSA members only. 

Developing and Visualizing Community Seismic Velocity Models

Tuesday, 23 April 2019, 1:00 p.m.–4:30 p.m.
Limit: 30 participants

Required Materials

Laptops are required to participate in the hands-on activities.

Description

Three-dimensional seismic velocity models play an important role in many aspects of seismological research, including strong ground motion modeling, earthquake location and inversions for Earth structure.

This workshop will discuss the challenges and best practices for developing and maintaining community velocity models, as well as explore software and tools for visualizing 3-D models. Attendees will explore a variety of currently available community velocity models, learn scientific and technical differences between models and work with Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) and Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS) software tools to investigate properties of the models.

Attendees will examine SCEC’s Unified Community Velocity Model (UCVM) framework, an open-source software developed to help researchers use velocity models for ground motion simulations. Using hands-on tutorials, attendees will learn how to use the UCVM software to investigate differences between velocity models, create plots showing model properties in geographical areas of interest, generate simulation meshes from a velocity model and define and query a velocity model for a large region by combining multiple velocity models together.

Attendees will also participate in hands-on tutorials using the IRIS Data Management Center’s Earth Model Collaboration (EMC) ParaView Visualization Plugins. ParaView is an open-source data analysis and visualization application and these plugins are designed to extend and expand its functionalities so it can be used for 3-D visualization of Earth models and spatial datasets. By the end of this tutorial, attendees will have a working knowledge of EMC-plugins for ParaView and how to prepare their own models/data for display.

Instructors

Erin Wirth, U.S. Geological Survey; Philip Maechling, Southern California Earthquake Center; Manoch Bahavar, Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology

Registration

SSA Member: $25
Student Member: $15
Non-member: $50

Getting Published – Writing a Good Scientific Paper

Tuesday, 23 April 2019, 1:00–4:00 p.m.

Description

Learn all the nuts-and-bolts of a good scientific paper.

In this workshop, attendees will learn the elements of a good scientific paper through group discussions and analyzing effective examples of writing, figures, tables, citations and supplementary material in published papers. The workshop will also cover what to do once the paper is finished, such as how to pick a publisher, as well as how to respond to reviewers’ comments.

More Information

Instructors

Roland Burgmann, University of California, Berkeley; John Ebel, Boston College; Brent Grocholski, Science

Registration

SSA Member: $25
Student Member: $15
Non-member: $50

Machine Learning for Seismology

Tuesday, 23 April 2019, 12:30–4:30 p.m.
Limit: 60 people

Description

Learn how to use machine learning in your research!

The increase in computational capability in the past decade has created new opportunities for machine learning and data science in the seismological fields. This workshop offers an introduction to machine learning concepts and a hands-on look at how to use them in seismological research.

The workshop will cover introductory machine learning topics such as regression, classification, clustering, data cleaning, feature engineering and automatic feature extraction with deep learning. Attendees will then learn about the practical issues that are encountered when applying these methods to waveform and seismicity data.

Laptops are recommended to follow along with the examples presented in class and become familiar with workflows that can easily be adopted in your future research. The example code and data will be provided so you can continue to experiment after the workshop.

If you would like to install and play with the code, you can do so using this link: https://github.com/qingkaikong/SSA_Machine_Learning_2019

Instructors

Karianne Bergen, Harvard; Qingkai Kong, University of California, Berkeley; Zefeng Li, Caltech; Youzuo Lin, Los Alamos National Laboratory; Maruti Kumar Mudunuru, Los Alamos National Laboratory; Daniel Trugman, Los Alamos National Laboratory

Registration

SSA Member: $25
Student Member: $15
Non-member: $50

Measuring Fault Parameters and Slip from Geodetic Imaging Data using GeoGateway Online Tools

Tuesday, 23 April 2019, 1:00–4:30 p.m.
Limit: 25 people

Description

GeoGateway provides online tools for analysis, modeling, and response using geodetic imaging data. The main application of GeoGateway is to analyze and model crustal deformation related to earthquakes, and measure fault slip. The tools focus on airborne InSAR data from NASA’s airborne UAVSAR platform and Global Positioning System (GPS) position time series, displacements, and velocities.

This workshop provides an overview of geodetic imaging and a hands-on experience working with the tools available through GeoGateway. Attendees will gain an understanding of GPS time series and produce GPS station velocities, displacements, coseismic offsets and postseismic motions. Attendees will also analyze UAVSAR data to measure fault slip and crustal deformation, as well as learn to identify signals reflecting solid Earth processes versus signal from error sources. The workshop is geared toward geologists and students who want to apply geodetic imaging data to their research.

More Information

Instructors

Andrea Donnellan, Jet Propulsion Laboratory; Lisa Grant Ludwig, University of California, Irvine; John Rundle, University of California, Davis

Registration

SSA Member: $25
Student Member: $15
Non-member: $50