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Everyone
has their life-turning points. My life turning point is the
magnitude 7.6 earthquake that hit Taiwan on September 21st,
1999. Before the earthquake, I was still a zealous sociologist
who thought that abstract thinking and argumentation can change
the world. After experiencing the destructive shaking and
seeing so many people killed in that earthquake, I started
to ponder what knowledge will ultimately help the people in
Taiwan to prevent the same tragedy from happening again. That
is when, I turned my eyes toward earth science, and cannot
take my eyes off it ever since.
During my last two years in college and two
years in graduate school, I strived to solve for the puzzle
related to another similarly devastating earthquake in Taiwan,
the 1935 Hsinchu- |
Taichung earthquake. Two thousand people
were killed in that event, and yet 60 years passed by we still
do not have a clear view as to the inter-relationship between
multiple surface ruptures. My study provides a complete geologic
and seismologic framework for the past, the present and the
predicted future of the involved faults. My result earned
the outstanding student paper award in the 2004 Joint Geosciences
Assembly in Taiwan
If the 1999 Chi-chi earthquake shook my life, the magnitude
9.1 Sumatra earthquake in December 2004 shook the whole world.
The sky-high casualties, with death toll up to a hundred thousand
people, focus scientists’ attention to everything related
to subduction zones where one plate submerges underneath another.
During my first three years in Caltech, I devoted myself to
the development of tools to incorporate space geodesy into
the study of subduction earthquakes. The first tool corrects
for the atmospheric disturbance that usually compromises the
interpretation of tectonic signals in radar interferometric
images. The second tool incorporates the space-borne radar
data with ground-based geodetic records to achieve a comprehensive
analysis of the subduction zone kinematics. The second phase
of my PhD study, is to apply these tools on large subduction
zones in the world, using the example of Chilean subduction
zone which just ruptured in February 2010. The goal is to
understand the kinematics, dynamics and earthquake cycle of
the subduction zone, with further implication for the general
rheology of earth’s lithosphere.
Besides academic performance, I’ve also been involved in
various outreach activities of earth science. I’ve been to
several science fairs to teach young kids about the San Andreas
Fault and the upcoming large earthquake in southern California.
I’ve also moderated tours for K-6 students in our division,
and talked about the mega storm in 1861-1862, and associated
landslide hazards. I’ll host a movie in May this year in the
campus series Science Saturday, in which I’ll guide the audience
through the disastrous tsunami in northern Sumatra in 2004,
and talk about several possible sources of tsunamis that may
attack continental United States.
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