Earthquake Detective

Vivian Tang
Vivian is a seismologist and she received a Ph.D. degree in Earth and Planetary Sciences at Northwestern Universit. Currently, she is a postdoctoral associate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign She studies detections of dynamically triggered seismic events in the United States and applies machine-learning algorithms to detect diverse small earthquakes.

Boris Rösler
Boris is a seismologist and a graduate student in Earth and Planetary Sciences. He is working towards a Ph.D. at Northwestern University and studies the influence of the source processes of earthquakes on surface waves. Since the amplitudes of surface waves depend on their radiation pattern, determining the focal mechanism of an earthquake may indicate where triggered earthquakes occur.

Jordan Nelson
Jordan is a chemist and a graduate student in the Chemistry Department of Northwestern University, where he is working towards his Ph.D. He enjoys challenges in 'Big Data' and data visualization, and he is collaborating with the Earthquake Detective team as part of the IDEAS Fellowship at Northwestern.

JaCoya Thompson
JaCoya is interested in the interface between computer science and Earth science. She is also a former high-school teacher. She is working towards a Ph.D. at Northwestern University.

Omkar Ranadive Omkar Ranadive is a graduate student in the Computer Science department at Northwestern University. His research interests are in Machine Learning and Reinforcement Learning. He is collaborating with the Earthquake Detective team to develop Machine Learning algorithms to help detect the low-amplitude seismic events and analyze them.

Kevin Chao
Kevin is a seismologist working on research into slow earthquakes. As a data science scholar at Northwestern University, he is currently involved in a big data study of cross-disciplinary research subjects.

Zhigang Peng
Zhigang Peng is a seismologist and a professor working at Georgia Tech. He is mostly interested in understanding the physics of earthquakes using seismic waves.

Michelle Paulsen
Michelle is the director of education, outreach, and communication programs for the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA) at Northwestern University. She is a co-investigator and director of Reach for the Stars, IDEAS, and RSG - Northwestern’s research communication training program for graduate students and post-doctoral researchers.

Laura Trouille
Laura is the vice president of citizen science at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. She has a Ph.D. in Astronomy.

Suzan van der Lee
Suzan is a seismologist and a professor in Earth and Planetary Sciences at Northwestern University.

Vivian Tang, Boris Rösler and Jordan Nelson are IDEAS fellows. IDEAS is an NSF Research Traineeship at Northwestern University. Michelle Paulsen and Suzan van der Lee are part of the leadership of IDEAS.

The data server for this project has been generously donated by Drs. Sue Griesbach and Bob Langan.

This project was developed as part of the Integrated Data-Driven Discovery in Earth and Astrophysical Sciences (IDEAS) Research Traineeship program supported by the National Science Foundation under grant DGE-1450006.