I am a Professor of Geophysics interested in how the Earth's surface deforms in response to earthquakes, magma movements, glacier dynamics, and human manipulation of subsurface fluids (carbon sequestration, hydrocarbon withdrawal, etc.)
If you would like to learn more about who I am and what I am up to, please visit the links below or navigate using the links in the menu bar above.
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NEWS:
• Read about CorGGLE: our summer 9-week paid internship that allows students from non-geoscience fields to explore opportunities for geoscience graduate study, specifically giving them exposure to myriad socially relevant careers in the Earth & Atmospheric Sciences. More info and application is at: https://sites.coecis.cornell.edu/eascorggle/
•Learn about our new 5 year (2023-2028) international and multi-institutional project to study the active Cordon Caulle volcano in southern Chile called CHILCO (Caulle Hazards and their Interplay during Laccolith Continuous Observations) .
•2023 Webinar (50 minutes) on “Aiming the firehose of satellite data at the fire: “Optimizing international satellite observations for volcano science and hazard mitigation" for the Earthscope Consortium: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UOeed7e_H8
•2023 interview by 60 minutes about observing volcanoes from space related to our new USGS report suggesting a global volcano observing plan
•Profile of my volcano research from January 2022 by the Alaska Satellite Facility
• I am featured in a video about volcanoes that will be studied by the forthcoming (2025) NASA-Indian Space Research Organization Synthetic Aperture Radar satellite (NISAR) as well as about the overall goals for the mission (with some outtakes) to study glaciers, earthquakes, volcanoes, and vegetation.
•I was the Chair of the organizing committee for "AndesFest 2023: Celebrating the Cornell Andes Project, Suzanne Kay, Teresa Jorda, and Rick Allmendinger" profiled in the Cornell Chronicle. The presentation about the project inception by Prof. Victor Ramos of the University of Buenos Aires is available here (in Spanish): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etAE1HnGgBo
• Videos and presentations available from the 4-day Online Workshop on Volcano Monitoring Infrastructure on the Ground and in Space: Feb. 18-22, 2021 that I co-organized (See workshop report here)
•Check out our NASA-funded project to study the impact of volcanic ash in the Earth system using remote sensing, geochemistry, and Earth system models (including Natalie Mahowald PI and Esteban Gazel Co-PI)
• Viral video of the formation of an ice stream at Vavilov Ice Cap in Russia by Cornell graduate student Whyjay Zheng based on his paper in GRL that was one fo the top 10% of downloaded papers. This has been covered by several media outlets including Scientific American. This follows up his earlier video that had more than 200k views described in a paper led by Mike Willis.
• Great book on geology of the Finger Lakes Region by late Professor Art Bloom. I worked with several others to get this book published in June, 2018. You can buy it online and most images in the book are available freely for educational use. You can see a 45 minute presentation I gave in the Mann Library Chats in the Stacks series here (from November 2019) and an earlier version of the talk at the Museum of the Earth here.
• Developing global satellite volcano monitoring: We had a project from the USGS Powell Center for Analysis and Synthesis that you can learn about here. Read about our Global Volcano Deformation Database Task Force that is part of the Global Volcano Model. You can see a video of my 2014 AGU talk about this project if you can sign in. I am also contributing to the CEOS Volcano Pilot Project for Latin America.
•What is a zombie volcano? Watch this video of my talk entitled "Seeing the Earth Again for the First Time from Space: Zombie Volcanoes, Simultaneously Subsiding Volcanoes, and the Eruption that Canceled my Plane Flight" at the annual National Academy of Science's Kavli Frontiers of Science symposia November, 2015 in Irvine, CA.
• Anyway, Is a zombie volcano a thing? My commentary at the AGU site.
• A pdf draft of a textbook on InSAR and the ROI_PAC software has been released (comments are welcome!): Open-source software for geodetic imaging: ROI_PAC for InSAR and pixel tracking
• Digitizing glacier photos from the Cornell archives from Alaska and Greenland taken by Professors Ralph Stockman Tarr, Oscar D. von Engeln and others. You can read about the project with Cornell History Professor Aaron Sachs and Purdue Assistant Professor Julie Elliott and see the photos here. I gave a talk about the project and an exhibit called "Historic Ice" featuring newly digitized images in November 2015 at Cornell's Mann library that you can watch here entitled: "Glacier Change in Greenland and Alaska Since the Pioneering Cornell Expeditions Led by R. S. Tarr (1896-1911)" that was featured in the Cornell Daily Sun.
* To learn more about my research, please read these summaries by NASA and Cornell, and on the Department webpage.
* Read my comments about our 5 year (2009-2015), $3.5 million dollar NSF project called PLUTONS. Some corrections to this article: the lead institution of the project is the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, the lead scientist is Steve McNutt, and the project also includes the University of Bristol via a 4 year project funded by NERC.
* Does the Moon have 'earthquakes'? My Answer at the Ask A Scientist! website.
* Audio and video of a very old 1-hour seminar about my research is available from: Department of Physics at the University of Toronto in Dec. 2006
* Natural Hazards: Keeping them from becoming natural disasters in Latin America. My article in the Winter 2007 issue of ReVista: The Harvard Review of Latin America. Available as HTML version missing some photos.