2011 Graduate Research Award Winner

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Dr. Valentin Samuel Gischig

PostDoctoral Fellow, Swiss Seismological Service, ETH Zurich

Dr. Valentin Gischig received his M.Sc. in Geophysics and Glaciology at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, in 2007. After a five month internship at Geoscience Australia, Canberra, in 2007, he started in a PhD project about rock slope instability in the Chair of Engineering Geology at ETH Zurich. He finished his PhD thesis in May 2011 with the thesis title: ‘Kinematics and failure mechanisms of the Randa rock slope instability (Switzerland)’, which was supervised by Dr. Jeffrey R. Moore, Dr. Florian Amann, Dr. Keith F. Evans and Prof. Simon Loew. Since October 2011, Valentin Gischig is a postdoc in the Swiss Seismological Service, ETH Zurich, working in a project related to induced seismicity in enhanced geothermal systems. Dr. Gischig published 5 papers and submitted 4 papers for publications in peer-reviewed journals. He has been nominated for the AGU Natural Hazards Graduate Award by Prof. Simon Loew.

 

Congratulations to Dr. Gischig, the 2011 winner of the AGU Natural Hazards Focus Group Award for Graduate Research!

2010 Graduate Research Award Winner

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Dr. Ning Lin

NOAA C&GC PostDoctoral Fellow, MIT

Dr. Ning Lin obtained her PhD from Princeton in June 2010, her M.S. from Texas Tech in 2005, and B.S. from the Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China, in 2002. Being in China, Ning studied local wind forces on tall buildings. In Texas Tech she investigated the aerodynamics and trajectory of wind-borne debris. In Princeton, as a research assistant to James Smith, Ning studied extreme winds, heavy rainfall and storm surge from hurricane Isabel (2003). Under a supervision of her PhD adviser, Erik Vanmarcke, she developed an innovative wind-borne debris risk model based on Poisson random measure theory and integrated the debris risk model and a pressure damage model to create a structural vulnerability model to study cumulative wind damage to residential neighborhoods during storm passage. She also played a key role in developing collaborations with the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory and in incorporating advanced numerical weather forecasting models into hurricane risk analysis. Ning Lin visited MIT in 2009 for several weeks and worked with Kerry Emanuel on hurricane storm surge risk assessment. Starting in July 2010 Dr. Lin will be a postdoc at MIT to continue this study. She published 10 journal articles and 10 conference papers. She has been nominated by Erik Vanmarcke from Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Princeton University.

 

Congratulations to Dr. Lin, the 2010 winner of the AGU Natural Hazards Focus Group Award for Graduate Research!

 

2009 Graduate Research Award Winner

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Dr. Meththika Vithanage

Group Leader
Chemical and Environmental Systems Modeling Research Group
Institute of Fundamental Studies,
Kandy, Sri Lanka

Dr. Vithanage got her PhD on “Effect of Tsunami on Coastal Aquifers: Field Studies and Tank Experiments” under the supervision of Professors Karsten Jensen and Peter Engesgaard in the Department of Geology and Geography at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark in February 2009. She has been nominated by Dr. Jayantha Obeysekera from South Florida Water Management District.

 

Our sincere congratulations to Meththika with this distinction and very best wishes for her future career!