Science Leaders
My name is Elizabeth Cochran and I am an assistant professor of Seismology at UC Riverside. I received my undergraduate degree in Geophysics at UC Santa Barbara and completed a senior thesis studying amplification of seismic waves caused by different geologic material. I received a PhD in Geophysics and Space Physics at UC Los Angeles studying earthquake triggering and fault structure and evolution.
I am currently working on several projects to explore fault slip behavior and evolution. My research is observation-driven, so I am actively involved in field work to deploy seismic instruments along several faults. Using seismic data we can investigate the details of how an earthquake breaks a faults as well as the structure of the ground that the seismic waves travel through. For example, we can investigate an earthquake to determine the distribution and amplitude of slip as well as how quickly the fault broke. And, by looking at how fast seismic waves travel to different locations we can determine what type of rocks the wave passed through. This information can help us determine how strong the ground may shake during an event resulting in improved building codes.
Since seismic observations are the basis for much of what we know about earthquakes I am very interested in increasing the number of seismic stations around the world. That is how I came to be interested in using low costs MEMS sensors and distributing sensing techniques to record earthquakes. Using a higher density of observations we can improve our understanding of earthquakes, Earth structure, and the resulting seismic hazard.