Paul Selvadurai Receives AGU Outstanding Student Paper Award

Featured Faculty: Steven D. Glaser
CEE Geo-engineering PhD candidate, Paul Selvadurai, received the American Geophysical Union Outstanding Student Paper Award for his paper, "Laboratory Investigations into Micromechanical Mechanisms Controlling Earthquake Nucleation."
 
He presented the paper at the AGU conference in San Francisco last December. Only 4% of the students among the 20,000 attendees receive the OSPA award. Selvadurai's advisor is Professor Steve Glaser.
 
Selvadurai's research attempts to understand the physical processes surrounding earthquakes—in the laboratory. In the Glaser lab, he used sensors and experimental techniques to generate earthquakes one one trillionth the size of larger earthquakes (M6.0) observed in nature. While the lab earthquakes are much smaller, they display almost identical characteristics to earthquakes in nature. In fact, the lab earthquakes use the exact same modeling techniques as that used to size and understand larger earthquakes (such as those next door to the Berkeley campus).
 
This being said, Selvadurai does have greater control over features that create these earthquake. And because it is an experiment, he does not have to wait a couple of decades for a large quake to occur. Understanding how the smaller earthquakes influence the imminent larger earthquake can help better forecast seismic hazard in the future.
 

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