The Earthquake Problem

Emily Brodsky is a professor and earthquake physicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research focuses on connecting empirical observations of earthquakes with fundamental physical processes. She likes things that fail catastrophically. Prof. Brodsky earned her A.B. from Harvard in 1995 and Ph.D. from Caltech in 2001. She is an elected Member of the National Academy of Sciences as well as the recipient of numerous awards including 2005 Charles Richter Early Career award from the Seismological Society of America, the 2008 James Macelwane Medal from the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the 2019 Woolard Award from the Geological Society of America (GSA), the 2019 Gutenberg Lectureship, the 2021 Price Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, the 2022 Nemmers Award in Earth Science and is a Fellow of both AGU and GSA.  She has served on the Board of Directors of the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) and Incorporated Research Institutes for Seismology (IRIS) and is the chair of the Executive Committee of SZ4D.  She has published over 140 peer-reviewed articles and presented over 150 invited lectures in 30 states and 13 countries. Her work has been featured in major press outlets such as the BBC, NPR, Time Magazine, NY Times, Nature, Reuters, LA Times and The Wall Street Journal. She has mentored more than 40 graduate students and postdoctoral scholars, many who have gone on to become leaders in the field.