Research Interests
- Subduction zone structure and dynamics. Rupture process of large megathrust, intermediate-depth, and deep-focus earthquakes. Structure of plate interface and subducted slabs at different scales. Mechanics of slab deformation and deep earthquakes.
- Seismology in Southern California. Characterization of SoCal earthquakes. Urban Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) networks. Monitoring subsurface changes due to hydrological/geophysical processes.
- Submarine seismology. Study submarine earthquakes through numerical modeling of water phases and using submarine DAS networks. Microseism generation and ocean waves. Ocean temperature monitoring with earthquake T phases.
- Cryoseismology. Ambient noise imaging and monitoring. Distributed Acoustic Sensing on ice.
Recent News and Media Coverage
- [09/17/2020] Press release on our Science paper Seismic ocean thermometry by Science, Scientific American, BBC, Caltech, and many more.
- [06/04/2020] AGU EOS report: Everything’s Coming Up Roses for Pasadena Seismologists
- [05/14/2020] Science reports our DAS research about the 2020 Rose Parade: World’s loudest bands create seismic waves
- [05/08/2020] Marching.com reports our top 5 loudest marching bands of the 2020 Rose Parade: 2020 Rose Parade radiates rhythm underground
- [05/06/2020] Seismological Society of America (SSA) and Caltech feature our SRL paper Fiber Optics Capture Seismic Signatures of the Rose Parade
- [02/19/2020] Scientific American article discusses our DAS experiment on Taku Glacier, Alaska among others: Kilometers of "Dark Cable" Form the Newest Seismic Sensors
- [01/29/2020] Zhichao Shen receives AGU Outstanding Student Presentation Award from the 2019 AGU Fall Meeting. The title of the study is “Small-scale instraslab heterogeneity constrained from inter-source interferometry". Congratulations!
- [12/18/2019] Press release on our Nature Communications paper: Submarine Cables to Offshore Wind Farms Transformed into a Seismic Network and and on over 14 other news outlets.
- [12/03/2019] Press release from the Seismological Society of America about my "Emerging Topics" piece: Seismologists See Future in Fiber Optic Cables as Earthquake Sensors
- [11/19/2019] The Pasadena Array officially online: Caltech and the City of Pasadena Team Up to Build Seismic Sensing Network
- [10/17/2019] Caltech press release on our Science paper about the complicated rupture during the 2019 Ridgecrest earthquake sequence: Lessons From Ridgecrest
- [08/27/2019] The Caltech Effect covers our DAS research initiative: Listening with Light
- [07/24/2019] Caltech news on our rapid DAS deployment to the 2019 M7.1 Ridgecrest earthquake epicentral region: Seismologists Monitor Ridgecrest Aftershocks Using Novel Fiber Optic Network
- [05/24/2019] AGU EOS article covers our work of seismic noise interferometry across a surge glacier: Seismic Clues to Surging Glaciers
- [04/09/2019] Ethan Williams wins the 2019 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Congratulations!
