PhD Positions Available at ETH Zurich in Statistical Seismology

PhD POSITIONS AVAILABLE AT ETH ZURICH in STATISTICAL SEISMOLOGY

Two PhD positions, to be filled immediately, are available at the Swiss Seismological Service and the Institute of Geophysics, ETH Zurich, in collaboration with the department MTEC, ETH Zurich.

Scientific goals and program:
The two PhD students will work synergetically with an active interdisciplinary team of researchers at ETH Zurich and internationally (USA). The goal of the two PhDs is to identify and locate active faults in seismically active regions by using a scientifically rigorous approach based on seismicity. The goal is to gain a better understanding of the link between fault structures and earthquakes.

One PhD student focuses on the development of high-precision earthquake location methods, which improves significantly the present earthquake locations, in particular focal depth, and associated uncertainties by incorporating secondary arrivals, such as reflections from the Moho, and by solving the double-difference equations for earthquake location using a non-linear probabilistic approach. Non-linear probabilistic earthquake location will allow the student to compute a posteriori probability density function, which represents the complete, probabilistic solution to the earthquake location problem, including the complete information on uncertainty and resolution.

The other PhD student focuses on the construction of detailed and extensive fault networks from the relocated seismic catalogues and their quantified location errors, using a novel image analysis technique. The three-dimensional anisotropic dynamic clustering iterative method will be developed in such a way that the number and the size of the fault planes are controlled by the location uncertainty of each earthquake, and by incorporating a priori information from seismotectonics, such as focal mechanisms, and from structural geology, such as surface traces of faults, to constrain our solution.

Both projects exploit the resulting fault networks to analyze its statistical properties, the dynamics and triggering of seismicity in relation to the structure of fault networks, the issue of off-fault seismicity and the complexity of fault networks, and the association of earthquakes to faults using Bayesian inference. The physics of earthquakes will be addressed with respect to the temporal evolution of the fault network and stress field. The methods will be applied to natural data sets, which span very different temporal and spatial scales: i) the southern California earthquake catalog, ii) the Swiss earth-quake catalog, and iii) the earthquake catalog of the Basel Deep Heat Mining project.

Requirements:
Candidates with a master level in geophysics, physics, engineering, applied mathematics, or computer science will be considered. A knowledge of inversion algorithms or advanced statistics is desired. Programming skills in several languages, such as C++, Java, Matlab, or scripting languages, are essential. The successful candidate will participate in undergraduate teaching and routine work at the Swiss Seismological Service. English and German are working languages in the research groups. The project involves collaboration with institutions in the United States. The candidates can expect to spend weeks to months at partner institutions.

Candidates should send a CV and the names of three referees as soon as possible to Dr. Stephan Husen (husen@sed.ethz.ch) or Prof. Didier Sornette (dsornette@ethz.ch). Starting salary is 34 kCHF per year. The positions will remain opened until filled.