20 January 2025–SSA is pleased to announce the recipients of several of the Society’s awards for 2025. The Harry Fielding Reid Medal, the Charles F. Richter Early Career Award, the Frank Press Public Service Award and the SSA Distinguished Service Award are among the highest honors conferred by the Society.
2025 Harry Fielding Reid Medal: Charles Langston
Langston, professor emeritus at the Center for Earthquake Research and Information at the University of Memphis, receives the 2025 Reid Medal for his seminal research on receiver function methodology, developing methods of extracting and analyzing subtle signals from body waves that can be used to image the Earth’s crust and upper mantle in unprecedented detail. The powerful tool, described in his series of key papers in the late 1970s and early 1980s, has become a pillar of observational seismology for researchers across the globe. His receiver function methodology underlies the multi-station imaging techniques used in large seismic deployments by EarthScope Consortium and other international organizations, and Langston’s techniques are also increasingly used to study seismic data collected by single-station deployments from planetary missions such as Mars InSight.
2025 Charles F. Richter Early Career Award: Weiqiang Zhu
Zhu, an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley, receives the 2025 Richter Award for his contributions to artificial intelligence (AI)-based approaches to earthquake monitoring, numerical modeling and inverse problems that have pushed the frontier of seismological research. Zhu’s innovative work in applying machine learning to a host of geophysical problems has contributed to breakthroughs such as the reveal of a mantle sill complex related to magma transport beneath Hawai’i, the development of PhaseNet, a convolutional neural network to measure P- and S-wave arrival times and quantification of a fault valving mechanism providing new insights into earthquake ruptures and sequences, among other research.
2025 Frank Press Public Service Award: Jeffrey Given
Given receives the 2025 Press Award for his work in developing the complex seismic monitoring tools that were essential to building an operational Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO). His interest in software development and his fluency in many computer languages led to his key roles in establishing and maintaining the International Data Center (IDC). For 30 years, he offered expertise and advice on the CTBTO’s seismic waveform acquisition system, waveform detectors, surface wave processing, event detection and location moment tensor estimators.
2025 Distinguished Service to SSA Award: James “Jim” Mori
Mori, a former professor at Kyoto University, receives the 2025 Distinguished Service Award for his outstanding work in expanding the Seismological Society of America’s international presence and in ensuring investment in its newest members. He was recognized for his service as president, Board member and committee leadership, as well as his outreach to global seismological associations and devoted support to the SSA Kanamori Fund.
The deadline for next year’s nominations will be 30 September 2025.