Community News
SSA: A Voice for Seismology
25 June 2025—The Society continues to maintain a close connection with U.S. policymakers on Capitol Hill, stressing the important role of seismological research in addressing national challenges and encouraging federal…
Opening Doors: SSA’s Grant Programs
16 June 2025— Earlier this year, PhD student Yitang Cai presented their research at the General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union in Vienna, Austria (EGU25). Their SSA Global Travel…
Environmental Seismology: Q&A With Keynote Speaker Roland Bürgmann
16 June 2025— Roland Bürgmann, professor at the University of California, Berkeley Department of Earth and Planetary Science and the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory and head of the Active Tectonics group…
Join the SSA 2026 Co-chairs in Pasadena!
11 June 2025—The SSA Annual Meeting returns to its California roots next year as we celebrate the 120th anniversary of the Society. The 14-18 April 2026 conference in Pasadena offers…
Environmental Seismology Travel Grantees Announced
Two student members will participate in the 2025 Environmental Seismology Conference with the aid of travel grants made possible by generous donations from the community to the General Fund. Congratulations…
2025 Annual Meeting Student Presentation Awards Announced
16 May 2025—In an ongoing effort to support and promote the outstanding work of SSA student members, the Society is pleased to present 12 students with a 2025 Student Presentation…
At Work: Guilherme de Melo
12 May 2025—In Guilherme de Melo’s small hometown in northeastern Brazil, he remembers constant droughts that plagued the town’s twin livelihoods of agriculture and livestock and led to shortages of…
SSA Recognizes Trio of Top Reviewers
5 May 2025—One of the reasons that Samantha Hansen serves as a reviewer for The Seismic Record is “to get a first look at projects being completed by our peers…
At Work: Rebecca Colquhoun
11 April 2025—Rebecca Colquhoun liked math and science in school but wasn’t sure what kind of career that might launch. Should they go into physics? Chemistry? Computer science? “I was…
U.S. Earthquake Readiness Depends on Regional Seismic Networks
9 April 2025— Plane crashes are thankfully rare, but when they happen, investigators rely on the airplane’s “black box” for data to explain what happened and how to prevent it…
At Work: Boris Rösler
10 March 2025—“Moment tensors are a model to describe earthquake sources based on forces acting at the seismic source,” explains Boris Rösler. “In the 1960s, it was shown that these…
Keeping America Safe
A joint statement by SSA President Heather DeShon and President-Elect Susan Bilek 15 February 2025 — The recent termination of thousands of federal employees, including employees within the U.S. Department…
2025 SSA Board of Directors Election Results
February 13—The Seismological Society of America held its Board of Directors election on Friday, 3 January 2025. The following members were elected to a three-year term beginning 14 April 2025…
At Work: Wilnelly Ventura-Valentín
10 February 2025—Wilnelly Ventura-Valentín’s research as a Ph.D. student at Miami University in Ohio focuses on earthquake swarms, the bursts of seismic activity—small earthquakes all about the same magnitude—that start…
At Work: Daniel Gittins
9 January 2025—Earthquakes may be the noisy, attention-getters of seismological research, but geophysicist Daniel Gittins is focused on something a bit quieter. “Creep is the slow, gradual movement along faults…
Events of 1973 Chilean Coup Captured in Historical Seismograms
11 December 2024–Military vehicles rumbling toward the presidential palace, bombs dropped by the Chilean Air Force, and an eerie quiet descending over Santiago after a curfew imposed by a military…
At Work: Julian Lozos
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…
Gift Helps Paul Andrew Spudich Travel Grant Program Grow
05 August 2024 –A $10,000 gift from Paul Andrew Spudich’s sister, Suzanne, to the Paul Andrew Spudich Fund has expanded its travel grant offerings for early-career and student members. Providing…
At Work: Arsène Sadiki
29 July 2024–In the spring of 2024, Arsène Sadiki traveled from Goma Volcano Observatory (GVO) to share his research on the seismic precursors to the May 2021 eruption of Nyiragongo…
First Paul Andrew Spudich Travel Grantee Completes Scientific Journey
SSA’s newest grant program sends early-career member to Osaka, Japan Chunyang Ji, a postdoctoral scholar at North Carolina State University whose research focuses on the modeling and assessment of high-frequency…
At Work: Miao Zhang
15 May 2024–When it comes to seismic sources, observational seismologist Miao Zhang doesn’t play favorites. “I am curious about all types of seismic events on land and at sea, ranging…
At Work: Luis Donoso Carmona
12 March 2024–Earthquakes were part of Luis Donoso Carmona’s environment “for as long as I can remember,” growing up in northern Chile in the small city of Vallenar in the…
At Work: HyeJeong Kim
13 February 2024–Oceans cover about 70% of the Earth’s surface—a fact that draws HyeJeong Kim’s scientific gaze under the sea, even as the seismologist now works on dry land as…
At Work: Adrian Rodriguez-Marek
8 January 2024–The characterization of uncertainty has been a theme of Adrian Rodriguez-Marek’s career as an earthquake engineer. “That was something that I was interested in from the very first…
SSA Launches The Paul Andrew Spudich Fund
18 September 2023–A new fund at SSA honors the life and accomplishments of Paul Andrew Spudich (1950-2019) by supporting the professional development of Society members at the beginning of their…
At Work: Joses Omojola
30 November 2022–So far, the career of Joses Omojola has moved from water to oil to salt. His first interest, in hydrogeology, came about in high school after he watched…
At Work: Fan-Chi Lin
28 October 2022–Fan-Chi Lin likes to travel. Some of his favorite destinations are the U.S. national parks, “and I’ve always been curious about how seismology can help us to learn…
At Work: Xiaohua (Eric) Xu
30 September 2022–“Geodesy is quite an old research field that started pretty much when humans wanted to measure the Earth, but it is also very new, especially since the rise…
At Work: Andrea Bryant
31 August 2022–Andrea Bryant came to her work with NASA’s Dragonfly mission through what she calls “a beautiful accident.” Quarantining by herself in a tiny studio apartment in 2020, the…
At Work: Zoya Farajpour
29 July 2022–Zoya Farajpour was born in Iran, one of the most seismically active countries in the world. Most of Iran’s major cities and towns are in the vicinity of…
At Work: Manuel Matthew Mendoza
29 June 2022–The scenes of devastation from the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami were part of what made Manuel Mendoza consider a career as a geophysicist, he says. The combination…
SSA Establishes Standing DEI Committee
At its 20 November 2021 meeting, the SSA Board of Directors established the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Committee, a standing committee of the SSA Board of Directors. Preamble SSA…
At Work: Songqiao “Shawn” Wei
20 September 2021–Growing up in the mountains in China, Songqiao “Shawn” Wei never saw the ocean until he was 23, flying over the Pacific from Beijing to San Francisco for…
At Work: Louisa Brotherson
16 August 2021–Earthquakes are happening all the time inside Louisa Brotherson’s lab. Tiny ones, at least—and the strike-slip faults involved occur in Perspex plastic, not rock. Using a machine called…
At Work: Amir Salaree
15 July 2021–For Amir Salaree, the road to studying tsunamis began when he was a physics major at the University of Tehran, “looking for simple, real-world applications of all the…
At Work: Rengin Gök
15 March 2021–Rengin Gök’s work day starts early, with text messages and email from all around the Middle East, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and the Caucasus regions. Even before the…
At Work: Takahiko Uchide
16 December 2020–Big earthquakes may grab the headlines, but for Takahiko Uchide, the small events are just as interesting. For one thing, studying small earthquakes is a good way to…
At Work: Esteban Chaves
16 November 2020–Costa Rica is home to about 15,000 earthquakes a year, and its citizens are well-educated when it comes to the science behind all the seismic activity, says Esteban…
SSA Creates Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Task Force
Dear SSA Community: As a Society, we seek to do all we can to make science accessible to all. That goal has inspired a new task force to address diversity…
Supporting International Students
FROM BILL WALTER, PRESIDENT OF SSA 9 July 2020 — Seismology is a global endeavor, and the international scientific community benefits from a free exchange of people as well as…
At Work: Marlon Ramos
14 February 2020–As he pursued his master’s degree at Boise State University, Marlon Ramos was doing what he calls “traditional, active-source seismology,” interpreting seismic pictures of tsunami-producing faults near the…
At Work: Joan Latchman
15 July 2019 –Joan Latchman, a seismologist at The University of the West Indies Seismic Research Centre, was born in Trinidad and Tobago and grew up just a 15-minute walk…
At Work: Hiroshi Kawase
1 October 2018–Before becoming a professor within the Sophisticated Earthquake Risk Evaluation Program – part of Kyoto University’s Disaster Prevention Research Institute – Hiroshi Kawase seemed destined to become an…
At Work: Xyoli Pérez-Campos
27 December 2017–Xyoli Pérez-Campos was 11 years old when the magnitude 8.0 Michoacán earthquake struck the Mexico City region on 19 September 1985, collapsing buildings near her home. Her uncle…