ACADEMIC INTERESTS. My interests currently involve three related efforts.
First, my "traditional" research interest is the collection and analysis of seismological data in order to better understand the structure and evolution of the continental lithosphere. Seismological observations must be integrated with other geological and geophysical data to develop appropriate models of continental tectonics and this is an important component of my research. My program has been one of the more active field based seismology programs in the country for the last decade, with several domestic and international data collection deployments.
Second, I have fledgling program in K-12 science education. The question is: How do you get kids excited about science? Through the South Carolina Earth Physics Project (SCEPP), we are developing a state-wide program to use real-time earthquake data as a teaching tool in high school physics, physical science, and earth science. This is not an idea that originate with SCEPP, but SCEPP is the first state-funded, state-wide effort to apply this concept. Educational Seismology is growing worldwide and I anticipate that I will continue to work in this area for many years.
Third, I am an vocal advocate for the modernization of seismological software. For the past several years, I have received funding from IRIS to coordinate an effort to building a new software framework for seismological data collection and exchange. This project has dove-tailed with SCEPP, whose software is entirely based on this new framework. Recently, we received additional funding from IRIS to accelerate the development of a general purpose "earthquake explorer" sufficiently advanced to allow K-12 and the general public to access seismic data from the IRIS Data Management Center, the SCEPP data respository and other distributed data centers.
FOR MORE INFORMATION ....
August 2001 => I've just begun a long overdue WWW site upgrade. I'm starting with brief descriptions of past, present, and future projects and my hope is that these will expand over the next couple of months.
General information about our Seismology Research Program, including SCEPP and our Software Development efforts is also available.
Finally, interested parties can link to my traditional academic vita, a list of publications and a summary of funding.