Suzan van der Lee was honored with the Sarah Rebecca Roland Professor of the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences during an investiture ceremony of endowed chairs on March 9.
She conducts geophysics research and teaches geophysics and data science at Northwestern University. Her research is data driven and aims to generate understanding of the dynamics of Earth’s interior and plate tectonics.
Suzan van der Lee describes her research below:
Earthquakes are powerful evidence that the Earth is continuously reshaping. The seismic signals emitted by earthquakes encrypt 1) important information about these powerful and sometimes destructive events, and 2) intelligence about the ongoing modification and dynamics of the Earth’s interior. I apply data science to extract this intelligence from millions of records of seismic waves. I am particularly interested in developing and applying new methods of inference to extract relevant signals from seismic records and to image the Earth’s interior structure from heterogeneous data. I am a practiced observational seismologist and co-develop seismic and joint tomography methods, including those using waveforms.
Earth’s interior structure reveals the effects of geodynamic forces that lead to planetary cooling, plate tectonics, continental rifting, subduction zones, volcanism, mountain building, earthquakes, and other modes of modifying its energy states. I am particularly interested in how plate tectonics started, how it is sustained, and when and how it will end. My research contributes to the idea that a secondary deep water cycle, through the transition zone, is a critical factor for sustaining plate tectonics.
I also harvest information from seismic waves generated by ambient dynamics in the Earth System and deduce source mechanisms of earth- and marsquakes. Part of the data we analyze is acquired through seismological field experiments. I have participated in or led such experiments in four continents.
About the Sarah Rebecca Roland Professor chair
Professor Sarah Rebecca Roland was the first woman to receive an undergraduate degree from Northwestern, having graduated from the College of Liberal Arts in 1874. In recognition of her pioneering role and her loyalty to Northwestern, the University named Roland Hall, its women’s infirmary (later a dormitory) in her honor.