News
Second Successful Summer for the USC Young Researchers Program
On August 13th, the Young Researchers Program graduated this year's nine outstanding high school students. The students proudly presented their remarkably professional posters detailing their summer research and impressed the grad students, faculty, and staff who attended in addition to their parents and friends. We are very proud of these students' accomplishments and look forward to hearing about the great things they end up doing following their high school graduations.
For the second year since we started this program, students unanimously reported at the end of the program (in anonymous surveys) that the program made them:
* More excited about science
* More likely to go to college
* More likely to become a scientist
* Want to do research in the future
* More aware of the world around them
* More confident in their abilities
We consider this to be a great success, and a testament to how effectively this program encourages these local students to go to college and pursue careers in science. Indeed, last year's graduates (class of '09) are starting their freshman years at four-year universities this fall and all of them that we were able to get in touch with reported that they plan to major in a science field. Many received scholarships, and several commented what a huge impact the Young Researchers Program had on their decisions and options.
In addition to the impact this program has on the high school students, the graduate student mentors involved in the program report that they also got a lot out of the program. Explaining their research to a student with only a very basic science background helps the mentors better-understand their field and helps them better communicate the significance of what they are doing. Being around students who are so enthusiastic and excited about the science and the research is incredibly motivating. Finally, one mentor reported that her participation in the program earned her glowing reviews in the "Broader Impacts" section of her recent NSF grant proposal.
A few relevant statistics on this year's program:
Of the nine high school researchers, eight will be first-generation college students and seven were Latino. All of the students represent groups traditionally underrepresented in the physical sciences.
Six of the nine high school researchers were young women, all of whom were matched with a female graduate student mentor and role model.
Seven of the nine high school researchers worked with graduate students in the Earth Sciences department. Their projects represented many of the department's programs: tectonics, paleontology, ocean science, and geobiology.
The National Science Foundation and the United States Geological Survey have announced that the Southern California Earthquake Center core research funding will be renewed for the 2012-2017 period. SCEC will continue to be headquartered at USC with W.M. Keck Professor of Geophysics Thomas Jordan as PI.
SCEC4 will move earthquake science forward through highly integrated collaborations that are coordinated across scientific disciplines and research institutions and enabled by high performance computing and advanced information technology. It will focus on six fundamental problems of earthquake physics:
a. Stress transfer from plate motion to crustal faults: long-term fault slip rates.
b. Stress-mediated fault interactions and earthquake clustering: evaluation of mechanisms.
c. Evolution of fault resistance during seismic slip: scale-appropriate laws for rupture modeling.
d. Structure and evolution of fault zones and systems: relation to earthquake physics.
e. Causes and effects of transient deformations: slow slip events and tectonic tremor.
f. Seismic wave generation and scattering: prediction of strong ground motions.
The Center will translate basic research into practical products for reducing risk and improving community resilience in Southern California and elsewhere. The SCEC4 program will help to:
- transform long-term seismic hazard analysis, the most important geotechnology for characterizing seismic hazards and reducing earthquake risk, into a physics-based science;
- develop operational earthquake forecasting into a capability that can provide authoritative information about the time dependence of seismic hazards to help communities prepare for potentially destructive earthquakes;
- enable earthquake early warning—advanced notification that an earthquake is underway and predictions of when strong shaking will arrive at more distant sites—and
- improve the delivery of post-event information about strong ground motions and secondary hazards.
The Center will create, prototype, and refine these operational capabilities in partnership with the USGS and other government agencies. In addition to better earthquake forecasting and ground motion prediction models, important SCEC4 contributions will include the CSEP cyberinfrastructure needed to evaluate prospectively and continually the performance of the operational models and their components by comparing the forecast ground motions with those actually recorded. Its international leadership in system science and sustained efforts to educate a diverse scientific workforce will contribute to its broader impacts.
In the aftermath of the L'Aquila, Italy, earthquake of 6 April 2009, an International Commission on Earthquake Forecasting for Civil Protection was appointed to assess the current state of knowledge of short-term prediction and forecasting of tectonic earthquakes and to determine guidelines for utilization of possible forerunners of large earthquakes to drive civil protection actions, including the use of probabilistic seismic hazard analysis in the wake of a large earthquake.
The Commission was chaired by USC's Thomas H. Jordan, director of the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) and comprised geoscientists from around the world with wide experience in earthquake forecasting and prediction.
Announcing the Adam Fischer International Travel Grant Fund
Adam Fischer received his Ph.D. in 2008 and has donated funds (matched by ExxonMobil) to the Department of Earth Sciences for graduate student support. The funds have been designated to support graduate student travel to international meetings and workshops outside North America. Funding applications may be made to the Graduate Student Review Committee at any time after January 1, 2010.
At this time, $18,000 is available to provide $1,500 to each of 12 students to attend meetings or workshops.
Rules for application include:
- The applicant must have passed the Ph.D. oral examination.
- The meeting/workshop cannot take place before June 1, 2010.
- The student must make an oral or poster presentation at the meeting.
- A faculty member may only endorse one application for travel support with the currently available funding.
- This award may be supplemented by funding from other sources (student's advisor, meeting funds, etc.)
- Awardees must send a note to Adam with a summary of the travel and meeting experience.
USC Earth Sciences and SCEC host Science & Technology Awareness Day (Tech Day) on May 2, 2009, along with the African American Engineers and Professional Employees Association (AAEPEA)
On May 2, 2009, the Southern California Earthquake Center, in conjunction with the USC Earth Sciences Department, hosted the first Science and Technology Day at the main USC campus. This event was modeled after the Science and Technology Awareness Days held annually in Exposition Park, just south of the USC campus. Approximately 200 students joined exhibitors for a day of learning, with topics ranging from earth science and earthquakes to optics and gravity. Read more....