The Seismological Society of America invests in its community’s efforts that advance the mission of the Society through a modest grant program.
The SSA Community Grants Program accepts applications to support small scientific conferences, workshops and events that provide our members and future seismologists with opportunities for training, learning and networking.
Learn about past recipients.
Next Application Period: February 2025
Application process:
SSA will accept proposals twice per year (February and July):
- February 2024 for the period covering April 2024 – March 2025
- July 2024 for the period covering September 2024 – August 2025
There is a 2,000 character limit per field (400 words). If your answers exceed that limit, please email your application in PDF form to ssagrants@seismosoc.org.
Contact ssagrants@seismosoc.org with questions.
The proposal requirements include:
- A meeting summary, including: an event title, location, dates and a two-paragraph summary.
- A minimum of one meeting organizer who is a member of the Society. The member must be in good standing for at least one year prior to the application period.
- A detailed event plan that includes:
- A description of the meeting purpose and objectives.
- List of the names of your leadership team, their credentials and individual responsibilities.
- Identification of the target audience and expected number of attendees. A tentative meeting schedule and program.
- A description of the planning process.
- A description of outreach efforts to those under-represented in seismology.
- A description of the event location including facilities and logistical arrangements required to hold the event.
- Identification of similar meetings and describe how the event will be unique.
- A description of how the event will contribute to the global seismological community and advance earthquake science.
- A detailed budget request.
For student-led efforts, SSA requires a faculty member to endorse the project. This individual will serve as the institutional contact for transmitting the funds. If the designated person is not affiliated with the primary organizing institution, then a faculty member at the host institution is also required to receive the grant.
Matching grants, cost sharing or other sources of funding are encouraged. The program will consider requests to cover direct expenses only. Grants will not cover institutional overhead.
The limit on grant requests for 2024 is $5,000 per request.
SSA Acknowledgement
Successful grant applicants are required to include acknowledgement of SSA as a sponsor in their programming or literature. “Funding for [event name] was made possible by the Seismological Society of America.”
Selection Process
A Board-level selection committee is chaired by Carl Tape and includes Victor Huerfano, Kris Pankow and Andreas Fichtner.
The selection committee will review applications based on the following criteria:
- Significance and relevance to the SSA mission of advancing earthquake science.
- Innovation in the seismological community. Does this event fill an existing gap in programming?
- Approach to the creation of the event: Are the event logistics and planning process reasonable and detailed thoroughly?
- Background of the event organizers and participants. Is the experience of the event organizers relevant to the meeting’s expected outcomes and goals?
- Is our funding required?
Applicants are expected to receive notification of their application status within one month of the application deadline.
Grant Allocation
Within the framework of the Community Grants Program, the $5000 grant given by the Seismological Society of America is directly intended for the support and execution of the planned meeting, as outlined in the recipient’s application. As such, no portion of the granted funds shall be allocated towards institutional overhead expenses, ensuring all funds will go directly towards conducting the meeting.
Past Grant Recipients:
- July 2024: Leila Mizrahi and Vanille Ritz of the Swiss Seismological Service at ETH Zurich were awarded $4,000 to support the Statistical Seismology Hackathon for Early Career Scientists. This one-week event will bring together early-career scientists and PhD students to tackle unsolved problems in statistical seismology. Unlike traditional conferences, participants will learn through hands-on collaboration, fostering debate, dialogue, and exploration of high-risk, high-impact research avenues.
- July 2024: Julie Elliott of Michigan State University and Donna Shillington of Northern Arizona University received $2,000 to organize The Alaska-Aleutian Subduction Zone: Integrated Science and Future Opportunities Workshop. The workshop will examine Alaska’s subduction zone, focusing on megathrust earthquakes, slip behaviors, and megathrust properties. Goals include summarizing data, identifying gaps, fostering interdisciplinary collaborations, and generating a guiding document for future research and proposals, while expanding the research community.
- July 2024: Joseph Phillips and Joseph Byrnes of Northern Arizona University, along with Claire Richardson of Arizona State University, were awarded $4,000 to organize the ACCESS Second Annual Meeting. Building on the January 2024 meeting, this event will strengthen ties between ASU, NAU, and UA by sharing research, developing professional skills, and fostering collaboration in seismology and geophysical processes. The meeting will create an inclusive space for geophysicists, with a focus on early-career and underrepresented individuals, aiming to advance research and grow the ACCESS community.
- February 2024: Kiara Daly of Cornell University and Maochuan Zhang and Yiyu Ni of the University of Washington were awarded $5,000 to organize the 11 th in-person iteration of the Seismology Student Workshop (SSW), recognized as the only student-focused and student-led seismology and tectonophysics workshop in the country. Taking place this year in Seattle, the SSW provides a forum where students can share existing and newly developed techniques in seismology and participate in career-building experiences, including short courses and internships.
- February 2024: Suzan van der Lee of Northwestern University and Emily Brodsky of the University of California, Santa Cruz were awarded $5,000 to support postdoctoral students attending a week long workshop for training in select seismological analysis and for cogeneration of ideas for extended routine operations and/or research towards additional characterization and understanding of regional tectonics and seismic hazard around northern branches of the East African Rift System. Early and mid-career seismologists from East African countries have been invited to attend.
- July 2023: Claire Richardson (Arizona State University), Joseph Phillips (Northern Arizona University) and Ken Gourley (University of Arizona) were awarded $5,000 to create the Arizona Collaborative Consortium for Earth and Space Science (ACCESS) First Annual Meeting designed to foster collaboration, knowledge sharing, and professional development among Arizona’s Earth and planetary geophysics communities.
- February 2023: Ericka Alinne Solano, Arturo Iglesias Mendoza and Miguel Angel Rodríguez at UNAM, Mexico City, were awarded $5,000 to create a short course that focuses on Bayesian inversion methods applied to geophysical and seismological data.
- July 2022: The program’s first ever Community Grant was awarded to fund a workshop on subduction zone science (SZS) in January 2023 in Seattle, Washington. Congratulations to SSA members Joan Gomberg (USGS research geophysicist and University of Washington affiliate professor), Debi Kilb (project scientist, Scripps Institution of Oceanography) and Valerie Sahakian (assistant professor, University of Oregon) for their award of $5,000 to fund the workshop.