Erik Larson

Erik Larson completed his Ph.D. at Harvard in May 2000. His dissertation investigated methods for improving our understanding of the Earth's upper mantle through analyzing surface waves. The work dealt with issues in the modeling of data, such as the gap between global models and regional models and the effects of the azimuthal anisotropy. Also, the thesis presents a new automated method for measuring arrival angles of surface waves. Arrival angle data allows researchers to better constrain small-scale features. A initial inversion including this data reveals some new insight through phase velocity modeling.

Although, Erik is no longer pursuing new research (he is an engineer with ACTA, Inc. in Los Angeles), he continues his interest in seismology. He is working with Prof. Ekström to publish the results of the thesis for the seismological community. He also continues to maintain the web interface for the search of Harvard's earthquake catalog.

e-mail: larson@eps.harvard.edu