Profile

My research is focused on understanding the mechanics and dynamics of the Earth system, in particularly the structure and evolution of the upper mantle and transition zone. How have dynamic processes, both past and present, formed the mechanical, chemical, and thermal structure of the crust, lithosphere, and asthenosphere? What is the nature of the lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary? What role has the transition zone played in modulating the Earth’s evolution and, in particular, what were its effects on mass transfer and chemical differentiation between the upper and lower mantle?

Biography

I am currently a Research Scientist at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. Currently I’m continuing research focused on large and regional scale isotropic and anisotropic tomographic imaging initiated during my PhD, as well as utilizing innovative Bayesian-based receiver function techniques to image subduction zone structure.

I recently completed my PhD, jointly between the Geophysics Section of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS) with Sergei Lebedev, and the Geophysics Group in University College Dublin with Chris Bean. I started in January of 2010. During my PhD, I have been working on generating a new global, high-resolution, shear velocity and azimuthal anistropy model of the Earth's upper mantle and transition zone. The new model, SL2013sv, is constrained by waveform fits derived from more than half a million vertical-component seismograms, and includes both the istropic shear-speed perturbations and 2-Ψ azimuthally anisotropic perturbations from our 3D reference model. I am also working on parameterizing a radially anisotropic model, which utilizes our massive new dataset of both Rayleigh (vertical-component) and Love (horizontal component) waveform fits.

Prior to starting in Dublin, I completed both my B.Sc. and M.Sc. in the Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences, at the University of British Columbia. My Supervisor in Vancouver was Michael Bostock.

BSc Thesis: Receiver function analysis of teleseismic S-waves applied to the Cascadia subduction zone.

MSc Thesis: Nature of a low-velocity zone atop the transition zone in Northwestern Canada.

PhD Thesis: Imaging the structure and dynamics of the Earth’s upper mantle and crust using multimode waveform tomography.