About Me
I am the Southern California Seismic Network and Southern California Earthquake Data Center Manager. Previously I worked as a professor at the Institute of Geophysics in the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) where I was chair of the Seismology Department. I was also the Station Manager for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization seismic stations in Mexico for many years at the same time. I had the opportunity to visit the United Nations in Vienna, Austria as part of that position. It was an interesting experience to represent a Mexican institution as a foreigner, something that foreign scientists have done for a long time in the USA. Before that I was a graduate student at UCLA. My PhD work involved installing and maintaining a temporary seismic network in Mexico to image the subducted slab in a joint effort between Caltech, UCLA and UNAM. Finally, my career started as an undergraduate at the University of Washington in Seattle where I received two degrees with majors in Physics and Comparative History of Ideas.
Research Interests
- Regional structure. Utilize a variety of geophysical techniques to understand structure both in subduction zones and in transform plate boundaries like Southern California.
- Seismology of Slow Earthquake Phenomena. Measuring tremor to understand where and why slow slip occurs and how tremors are related to the rest of the signal.
- Network monitoring. Analyze waveform and catalog data to understand the health of the network and prepare for large, devistating earthquakes.
