TITLE: Earthquake seismology, state-of-the-art and future directions

SPEAKER: Dr. Zhigang Peng

ABSTRACT:

Seismology is a relatively new scientific field that uses seismic waves to study the interior of the Earth or other solid bodies and the seismic sources. Thanks to the recent advancement in sensing technology and data storage devices, seismic data are now routinely recorded in continuous mode. This has opened up many exciting new research directions in seismology, including identification of deep tectonic tremor along major plate-boundary faults around the world, and imaging of subsurface structures based on cross-correlations of continuous ambient noise signals. In this talk, I first summarize updated research results from these directions, followed by several case studies that utilize a waveform matching technique to identify new seismic events from continuous data. Finally, I will provide a list of future directions in earthquake seismology and possible areas for collaborations.

Bio:
Dr. Zhigang Peng is an associate professor of geophysics in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Institute of Technology. His research mainly focuses on active fault zone structures and earthquake physics. Over the past 6 years, he has received a total of more than $1 million research funding from National Science Foundation, United States Geologic Survey, Southern California Earthquake Center, etc. Dr. Peng has published more than 50 papers in peer-reviewed journals such as Nature Geosciences, Sciences, Journal of Geophysical Research (JGR), Geophysical Research Letters, etc. His H-index is 16, and his research results have been widely reported by major news and scientific media around the world. He is currently an associated editor for JGR and Bulletin of Seismological Society of America. Dr. Peng is a recipient of the NSF CAREER award, and the Charles Richter Award from the Seismological Society of America (SSA).

Dr. Peng was born in 1975 in Sichuan Province, China. He got his B.S. in the University of Science of Technology of China in 1998 and his Ph.D. in University of Southern California in 2004.