Global Travel Grant Recipients and Announcements

List of Global Travel Grant Recipients
Stories from Global Travel Grant Recipients

All Global Travel Grant Recipients

Find the list of SSA Global Travel Grant recipients below. Learn more about the travel grant and application process here.

Year	Grantee	Program	Location	Amount
July 2024	Saiful Islam Apu	European Geosciences Union 2025	Vienna, Austria	$2,400
July 2024	Phuc Mach	5th General Assembly Asian Seismological Commission	Belek, Antalya, Turkiye	$1,050
July 2024	Rodrigo Leon Loya	2024 Annual Meeting of the Unión Geofísica Mexicana	Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico	$1,200
July 2024	Yiting Cai	European Geosciences Union 2025	Vienna, Austria	$1,700
February 2024	Sergio Leon-Rios	5th Regional Assembly of the Latin American and Caribbean Seismological Commission	San José, Costa Rica	$2,000
February 2024	Shikha Sharma	18th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering	Milan, Italy	$2,500
February 2024	Nicolas Pinzon Matapi	12th International INQUA Meeting on Paleoseismology, Active Tectonics, and Archaeoseismology	Los Andes, Central Chile	$1,850
February 2024	Himanshu Agrawal	39th General Assembly of the European Seismological Commission	Corfu, Greece	$1,200
February 2024	Rodrigo Contreras-Arratia	5th Regional Assembly of the Latin American and Caribbean Seismological Commission	San José, Costa Rica	$2,500
July 2023	Venkata Gangadhara Rao	EGU General Assembly 2024	Vienna, Austria	$1,860
July 2023	Cassie Gann-Phillips	Geo-Congress 2024	Vancouver, Canada	$1,700
July 2023	Leonardo Colavitti	RAUGM 2023 – Annual Meeting of Mexican Geophysical Union	Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico	$2,500
July 2023	Felix Rodriguez Cardozo	EGU General Assembly 2024	Vienna, Austria	$2,500
February 2023	Ziqi (Evan) Zhang	28th IUGG General Assembly	Berlin, Germany	$2,500
February 2023	Zoe Yin	FRINGE 2023	Leeds, United Kingdom	$2,000
February 2023	Stacey Martin	8th International Colloquium of Historical Earthquakes & Paleoseismology	Lixouri, Kefalonia Island, Greece	$2,500
February 2023	Kiran Pandey	28th IUGG General Assembly	Berlin, Germany	$2,000
July 2022	Marc Garcia	National Diversity in STEM Conference	San Juan, Puerto Rico	$2,200
July 2022	Cristina Lorenzo-Velázquez	Latin American and Caribbean Seismological Commission IV ASSEMBLY	Quito, Ecuador	$1,800
February 2022	Jared Bryan	Passive Imaging & Monitoring in Wave Physics: From Seismology to Ultrasound	Cargèse, France	$2,463
February 2022	Claire Doody	EGU General Assembly 2022	Vienna, Austria	$2,390
February 2022	Molly Gallahue	Sigma2 Closing Symposium	Avignon, France	$2,000
February 2022	Revathy Parameswaran	2022 NISAR Science Community Workshop	Pasadena, California, USA	$1,800
February 2022	Xiaotao Yang	Volatiles from Source to Surface Workshop – A GeoPRISMS Synthesis Workshop	Bozeman, Montana, USA	$1,210
July 2021	Shanna Chu	Earthquakes: Nucleation, Triggering and Relationships with Aseismic Processes Workshop	Corsica, France	$1,600
July 2021	Danielle Lindsay	Structure and Deformation at Plate Boundaries Workshop	Honolulu, Hawaii	$1,680
July 2021	Christina Tsarsitalidou	Passive Imaging and Monitoring in Wave Physics: From Seismology to Ultrasound Workshop	Corsica, France	$1,075
February 2021	Molly Gallahue	EGU General Assembly 2021	Virtual	$150
February 2020	Piotr A. Bońkowski	17th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering	Sendai, Japan	$2,500
February 2020	Ezgi Karasozen	General Assembly of the European Seismological Commission	Corfu, Greece	$1,975
February 2020	Karthik Reddy Sai Krishna Konala	17th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering	Sendai, Japan	$1,175
February 2020	Chris Milliner	COMET Annual Meeting	Liverpool, United Kingdom	$1,100
February 2020	Erika Schiappapietra	17th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering	Sendai, Japan	$1,950
July 2019	Waheed G. Akande	8th International Conference of Seismology & Earthquake Engineering	Tehran, Iran	$1,424
July 2019	Jordan R. Caylor	International Symposium on Deep Seismic Profiling of the Continents and their Margins	Perth, Australia	$2,850
July 2019	Sofia Cubillos Gordillo	National Earthquake Conference	San Diego, California	$1,000
July 2019	Mohammadreza Jamalreyhani	International Conference on Earthquake Engineering and Seismology	Paris, France	$1,500
July 2019	Leah M. Salditch	International Colloquium on Historical Earthquakes & Paleoseismology Studies	Barcelona, Spain	$2,040
February 2019	Farnaz Kamranzad	11th International Workshop on Statistical Seismology	Hakone, Japan	$1,200
February 2019	Angela G. Marusiak	Summer 2019 InSight Science Team Meeting	Paris, France	$1,325
February 2019	Nicolás Pinzón	XVII Colombian Congress of Geology and IV Explorer Symposium 2019	Santa Marta, Colombia	$1,000
February 2019	Swasti Saxena	Structural Mechanics in Reactor Technology (SMiRT) 25	Charlotte, North Carolina	$1,500
February 2019	Hema Sandeep Sharma	Passive Imaging & Monitoring in Wave Physics: From Seismology to Ultrasound	Cargèse, Corsica, France	$1,500
July 2018	Karen Pearson	11th International Workshop on Statistical Seismology	Hakone, Japan	$1,450
July 2018	Kseniia Nepeina	18th International Workshop on Seismic Anisotropy	Jerusalem, Israel	$1,000
February 2018	Rachel Hatch	Banff 2018 International Induced Seismicity Workshop	Alberta, Canada	$1,000
February 2018	Heather McFarlin	Cities on Volcanoes 10	Naples, Italy	$2,000
February 2018	Nadine Reitman	2018 Southern California Earthquake Center Annual Meeting	Palm Springs, California	$520

Stories from Global Travel Grant Recipients

Student and early-career members are invited to apply for SSA Global Travel Grants in February and July. The grants of up to $2,500 dollars (plus an additional $500 to help cover parents’ childcare costs) have already paid the way for dozens of SSA members to attend seismology-related conferences and workshops, in-person or virtual, hosted by other organizations worldwide.

As recipients like Molly Gallahue point out, the grants offer student and early-career members a helping hand over the financial obstacles that can stand in the way of attending conferences and making career-advancing connections in the wider scientific community.

Gallahue, a PhD candidate at Northwestern University, said that her Global Travel Grant, which took her to the SIGMA2 Closing Symposium conference in Avignon, France, at the end of May, also “took so much financial and logistical stress off myself, which cannot be underestimated with all the remaining complexities of international travel due to the pandemic.” The conference, her first outside North America, was also the smallest conference Gallahue had ever attended.

Global Travel Grants…

Cassie Gann-Phillips, a recipient of the July 2023 SSA Global Travel Grant from North Carolina State, recently had the opportunity to attend Geo-Congress 2024 in Vancouver, Canada. After attending the conference, Cassie explained, “This Global Travel Grant represented an opportunity for me to share my research on regional seismic site amplification on an international level.” Global Travel Grants play a crucial role in enabling students and early-career scientists to participate in global scientific discourse.

Cassie Gann-Phillips at her poster at Geo-Congress 2024

For Cassie, attending Geo-Congress 2024 was more than just a chance to present her research; it was about forging connections. She stated, “Being able to attend Geo-Congress 2024 allowed me to make new connections with both researchers and practitioners in industry which I will be able to use in my future research endeavors.” She continued, “These connections are invaluable to me and also help me feel connected within the geotechnical earthquake engineering community.”

Presenting a poster at Geo-Congress 2024, Cassie, was a finalist in the blind student poster competition. She recalls, “Both the opportunity to discuss my research with others through my poster presentation, and the networking with geotechnical engineers and professors in academia were the most valuable aspects of attending Geo-Congress 2024.” Global Travel Grants enable SSA student and early-career members to share their scientific research across international borders, fostering global scientific collaboration. “I would recommend all of my colleagues to apply for the Global Travel Grant,” Cassie states. She continues, “so that they can have new international experiences and strengthen their relationships within their research communities.”

The SSA Global Travel Grant Sparks Progress

The SSA Global Travel Grant is a unique opportunity that helps SSA student and early career members travel to workshops and meetings anywhere in the world. Zoe Yin, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, traveled to the FRINGE 2023 conference in Leeds, United Kingdom this fall with the help of the Global Travel Grant.

“My research is focused on using SAR and InSAR to characterize and quantify ground deformations surrounding earthquake ruptures and I am particularly interested in some smaller, secondary fault activations that can happen away from the main coseismic rupture” explained Yin. “At the meeting,” she added, “I met several others who were interested in this same topic and were able to share insights from their research and give feedback and suggestions for my work.”

This grant isn’t just about travel; it’s about opening doors to knowledge, creating pathways for discovery, and connecting bright minds across continents. “This opportunity to network with those interested in these same niche topics, as well as the potential for future collaborations, will be exceedingly valuable in my future research and career,” explained Yin. She continued, “The support to attend this meeting via the Global Travel Grant is a testament to the SSA community and its investment in young scientists and the future of seismic hazard research and mitigation.”

Unlimited Possibilities with the SSA Global Travel Grant

Kiran Pandey giving an oral presentation at IUGG 2023

Kiran Pandey, University of Memphis, traveled to IUGG in July 2023 with the aid of a Global Travel Grant. “My decision to attend the conference was motivated by my desire to network with prominent researchers in my field and investigate new research avenues,” Pandey says.

At the assembly, he presented his research and received feedback. “This constructive feedback has greatly improved the quality of my work and provided me with new insights,” says Pandey, who also appreciated the networking opportunities. “By interacting with other attendees, potential collaborators and eminent researchers, I established connections that could lead to future partnerships and the exchange of valuable knowledge,” he says.

In his research, Pandey has been using data from the GFZ Potsdam rock mechanics laboratory, not far from where the conference was held in Berlin, Germany. “Interacting with the collaborators and observing the lab’s experimental setup and cutting-edge apparatus was a worthy experience,” he says. “This firsthand experience enhanced my comprehension of the lab’s data and strengthened my relationships with the collaborators.”

Making Connections with a Global Travel Grant

Ziqi (Evan) Zhang giving an oral presentation at IUGG 2023

“To me, the Global Travel Grant represents opportunities and possibilities – to share my work with the community, to learn the latest cutting-edge research, to expand my network and to broaden my horizons,” says Ziqi (Evan) Zhang, a graduate student at the University of Rochester, who attended IUGG 2023 in Berlin Germany with an SSA Global Travel Grant.

For Zhang, the assembly was more than a scientific conference; it was an opportunity to grow his network and make invaluable connections. “Being able to attend this meeting expands my professional network and has a great impact on my future research and career in academia” he says.

SSA Global Travel Grants are a unique opportunity for student and early-career scientists. “The SSA Global Travel Grant is perhaps the only student travel grant program that provides recipients with the resources to travel to any [seismology] conference around the world,” Zhang says. He adds, “It provides a great opportunity to communicate science and to expand professional networks on an international level.”

SSA Global Travel Grants Advance Careers and Earthquake Science

Akande Receiving a Souvenir from Dr. Farokh Parsizadeh

An invitation to submit a paper. International collaboration. Feedback from senior scientists.

These career-changing connections happen at scientific conferences. SSA’s Global Travel Grant gives more members the opportunity to enjoy them.

“The SSA Global Travel Grant is special among other grants,” says Leah Salditch, Northwestern University. “Not many professional societies provide you with the means to attend other meetings, especially ones in other countries.” It’s an opportunity to improve science, she adds, by “sharing [information] across political borders.”

In Fall 2019, Waheed Gbenga Akande, University of Aberdeen and Salditch, Northwestern University received Global Travel Grants to fund their travel to international scientific meetings: Akande to the 8th International Conference of Seismology and Earthquake Engineering in Iran and Salditch to the 7th International Colloquium on Historical Earthquakes & Paleoseismology Studies in Barcelona, Spain.

While there, Akande and Salditch had the opportunity to improve their research, to submit a paper to Seismological Research Letters and to collaborate internationally. To learn more, read the full article on how this grant has benefitted these two students.

Swasti Saxena, a graduate student at the University of Nevada, Reno, knows the excitement that precedes presenting her research before leaders in her field. At the 2019 Structural Mechanics in Reactor Technology (SMiRT) 25 conference, she was “starstruck” to find herself presenting in the same session as senior scientists Yousef Bozorgnia and Kenneth Campbell.

Saxena uses their equations in her research utilizing large-scale wavefield simulations to predict vertical ground motion and to improve the resilience of nuclear power plants. “To be presenting in the same session as them… Wow,” she says. “I was glad they presented before me, because I got to see them as humans, as people answering questions.”

Saxena says the experience wouldn’t have been possible without an SSA Global Travel Grant.

Rachel Hatch in front of Mount Rundle in Banff. — Rachel Hatch in front of Mount Rundle in Banff

At first glance, an induced seismicity workshop might seem like an odd destination for Rachel Hatch, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Her interest in earthquakes started early, but it mostly revolved around seismic events with natural causes. She was born in San Francisco a month after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake that devastated the Bay Area, and for her master’s thesis she researched dynamically triggered earthquakes.

Now at the University of Nevada, Hatch studies small-to-moderate earthquakes in the Walker Lane tectonic region, a complex system of faults along the California and Nevada border that’s responsible for up to a quarter of all movement between the Pacific and North American plates, with the San Andreas Fault taking up the rest.

Heather McFarlin’s interest in volcanoes can be traced back to her father, who worked in hard rock drilling and loved science. This early exposure to geoscience followed her to the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where she majored in Geography.

“One of the very first homework assignments I had was to look up careers that seemed interesting and find out what it would take to get a job in the field,” McFarlin recalls.

Having always been fascinated by volcanoes, McFarlin looked up jobs that studied them.

“I wanted to work at an observatory monitoring volcanoes and help the people living nearby know what is going on in their environment,” she says. “One of the best ways to monitor a volcano is with seismic instruments, so I decided to become a volcano seismologist.”