EilonLab members
Anant Hariharan (Postdoctoral researcher, 2023-current)
Anant joined the group in the summer of 2023, having just completed a PhD at Brown University, where he worked with my long-time collaborator Colleen Dalton on all sorts of surface wave goodness (overtones, tomography, etc.). Here at UCSB, he’s working on surface wave arrival angles, and also dipping his toe in the ocean with body wave travel time tomography using the Old ORCA dataset.
Brennan Brunsvik (Grad student researcher, 2019-current)
Brennan joined the EilonLab in 2019, arriving with a Masters from the University of Louisiana Lafayette, and a Bachelors from Southern Utah University. Brennan has been working on an amphibious dataset from the Eastern North American Passive margin, where he has collected split travel time measurements on direct S and SKS waves to conduct anisotropic body wave tomography across the ocean-continent transition. Outside of work, Brennan plays music and plays with his cats. Catmusic.
Cristhian Salas-Pazmino
(Grad student researcher, 2021-current)
Cristhian first visited UCSB for a summer internship during his undergraduate degree at Yachay Tech, Ecuador. He liked it so much that after graduating and completing a Masters at Michigan Tech, he rejoined as a PhD student in 2021. Cristhian is working on velocity and attenuation tomography across Alaska, using EarthScope and flex-array datasets. When not working, Cristhian is a bit of a maestro on the football pitch (what people here seem to call the “soccer field”).
Keneni “Kenni” Godana
(Grad student researcher, 2022-current)
Kenni joined us with a BS in Earth and Environmental Sciences from the University of Illinois at Chicago. A Chicago native, Kenni is still getting used to the fact that there is no proper winter here, but isn’t complaining about it. Kenni is working on the mantle structure of mid-ocean ridges and young oceanic plates. They are combing OBS-based imaging with models and velocity/attenuation calculations to understand how mantle upwells, where the melt is, and how ridge processes dictate mature plates’ thermal structure.
Jon Petruska (Grad student researcher, 2018-2022)
Jon joined the EilonLab in 2018, arriving with a Masters of Science in Geology from Southern Illinois University, and a Bachelors at U Colorado Boulder. Jon worked on data from the East African Rift, applying the Automated Surface Wave Measurement System to obtain phase velocities across the Ethiopian Highlands, and computing receiver functions to map the rifting crust. He found new evidence for surprising breadth to the Main Ethiopian Rift, showing how the off-axis lithosphere is starting to break up [paper]. Jon was also heavily involved in the maintenance and running of our seismic lab, leading field excursions to install and service broadband seismometers in the Santa Ynez Mountains. Since graduating with a Masters, Jon has moved home to Colorado, where he is pursuing a career in data science.
Lun Zhang (Grad student researcher, 2019-2021)
Lun joined the EilonLab in 2019, with a Bachelors from Nanjing University, China. Lun worked with OBS data from the Pacific ORCA project, analyzing and implementing new tools for data quality control and pre-processing and cleaning the ocean bottom data (including tilt and compliance noise removal). Over the course of a hugely productive Masters, Lun computed receiver functions and conducted differential travel time measurements for body wave tomography, finding velocity discontinuities within oceanic lithosphere and evidence for small scale convection beneath the plate. Since graduating, Lun has been pursuing a career in computer science via graduate school at the University of Chicago.
Josephine Jorgensen (Undergrad researcher, 2022-current)
Josephine is working on a senior thesis research project exploring the abyssal hill and seamount bathymetry in the southwest Pacific Ocean, using spectral properties of the seafloor fabric to answer important questions about the age and provenance of the plate formed within the Cretaceous quiet zone.
Tali Cook (Undergrad researcher, 2022-current)
John “Tali” Cook is working on a senior thesis research project exploring unusual seamounts in the South Pacific Ocean. Primarily mentored by Brennan, he has established a database of seamount morphology and is exploring how detailed bathymetric and gravity data can shed light on their formative mechanisms.
Note: Tali is on the right of the photo.
Hannah Shabtian (Undergrad researcher, 2021-2022)
Hannah worked on a senior thesis researching seismic noise recorded on our array in the UCSB Sedgwick Reserve. She investigated the relationship between observed noise and environmental forcings, and temporal variations in the niose character of the central coast, with a publication forthcoming.
After graduating from the UCSB program with honours in 2022, Hannah moved to Brown University to start a PhD working with Greg Hirth (and others) primarily in the field of Rock Mechanics.
Left: Hannah presenting her research at the Seismological Society of America annual conference 2022
Ranpeng Li (Undergrad researcher, 2019-2020)
Ranpeng worked on teleseismic body wave tomography in Alaska, a project she completed for her senior thesis. After graduating from the UCSB program with honours, Ranpeng moved to Florida to start a PhD at the University of Florida, in geodynamics.
Emily Cunial (Undergrad researcher, 2020-2021)
Emily worked on developing codes to analyze and display seismometer state of health in the field, EilonLab members will use these codes during field work to assess the health of our stations.
Beth Shallon (Undergrad researcher, 2018-2020)
Beth used the polarization direction of P and S arrivals (and their crustal conversions) to investigate shallow seismic velocities beneath long-lived stations in the continental US. This work formed her senior thesis.
Beth has gone on to graduate school, she is in the PhD program at UC Riverside.
Evan Marchall (Undergrad researcher, 2018-2020)
Evan worked on our seismic fieldwork project in the Santa Ynez mountains, helping with countless station deployments and service runs, and helping organize our lab. His research included writing a set of codes to extract and display state of health information from our seismometers.
Evan has gone on to graduate school, he is (also) in the PhD program at UC Riverside.
Lesley Butcher (Grad student researcher, 2017-2018)
Lesley worked on using seismic attenuation to probe tectonically active regions for their potential as a source of geothermal energy extraction.
Lesley now works in public education in northern California.
