Category: Member

Kenneth W. Campbell Awarded 2025 Bruce Bolt Medal

Published on | Awards, BSSA, Member, News
Campbell has been a leader at several professional organizations, including CoreLogic Inc. and EQE International/EQECAT, focused on seismic hazard and risk analysis used in the insurance industry. His career also includes work for the U.S. Geological Survey and consulting companies specializing in developing design ground motion for worldwide critical facilities and oil platforms. He is perhaps best well-known for his impactful studies in ground motion modeling, several of which were cited by his peers in their nomination of Campbell for the Bolt Medal. These groundbreaking papers include the 1981 Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America paper “Near-Source Attenuation of Peak Horizontal Acceleration,” which introduced the concept of magnitude saturation of peak ground acceleration; and the 2003 BSSA paper “Prediction of Strong Ground Motion Using the Hybrid Empirical Method and Its Use in the Development of Ground-Motion (Attenuation) Relations in Eastern North America,” which pioneered the concept of the “hybrid-empirical method” for developing ground motion models in regions with sparse ground-motion recordings. Starting in 2003, Campbell participated in the Next Generation Attenuation (NGA) project series NGA-West, NGA-West2, NGA-East and NGA-Subduction, providing supporting studies for ground motion model development. These models have been adopted by the U.S. Geological Survey for the development of the USGS National Seismic Hazard maps, which inform seismic design codes across the country. Campbell has also worked as a consultant on high-profile infrastructure projects in the U.S. and internationally, including the seismic hazard analysis of the California High-Speed Rail project and multiple levels of the Senior Seismic Hazard Analysis Committee (SSHAC) projects for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He has also served as a seismic hazard expert for the International Atomic Energy Agency.

15 November 2024–The Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI), the Consortium of Organizations for Strong Motion Observation Systems (COSMOS), and SSA are pleased to announce that Kenneth W. Campbell of CoreLogic Inc. (retired) is the recipient of the 2025 Bruce Bolt Medal. Campbell was recognized for his 50 years of research … Continue Reading »

At Work: Julian Lozos

Published on | At Work, Community, Member, News
Julian Lozos at 2019 Ridgecrest rupture

4 October 2024–Julian Lozos describes his job—modestly—as “making fake earthquakes on his computer.” But the associate professor of geophysics at California State University, Northridge was also a fan of volcanoes from a young age. During his last visit at his parents’ home, “my mom found a book that I had … Continue Reading »

At Work: Voon Hui Lai

Published on | At Work, Member, News

4 September 2024–When Voon Hui Lai came to Australian National University as a postdoc, her department had just acquired a DAS interrogator “and I was basically tasked to make this thing work,” she recalled. “It was my first experience in deploying these really dense seismic sensors.” Distributed acoustic sensing or … Continue Reading »

SSA Community Grants and Global Travel Grants Announced!

Published on | Community, Early Career, Grants, Member, News, Students

26 August 2024–Open every February and July, SSA’s grant programs remain one of the most important ways that SSA helps develop a skilled workforce of seismologists who will continue to advance earthquake science. Funded by generous donations from our members to the Society’s General Fund, as well as a surplus … Continue Reading »