Elizabeth Cochran

This article is about the seismologist. For the nineteenth-century journalist, see Nellie Bly.

Elizabeth Scott Cochran is a seismologist known for her work on early warning systems for earthquakes and human-induced earthquakes.

Elizabeth Cochran
Education	University of California, Los Angeles
Scientific career
Thesis	Earthquake rupture initiation and fault structure : I. triggering of earthquakes by Earth tides : II. seismic anisotrophy near the Hector Mine rupture : III. post-seismic displacements observed with InSAR (2005)

Education and career

As a middle-school student living in California, Cochran experiences the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.^[1] Cochran has a B.S. from the University of California, Santa Barbara (2000) and went on to earn an M.Sc.(2003) and a Ph.D.(2005) from the University of California.^[2] Following her Ph.D. Cochran was a postdoctoral investigator at the University of California, San Diego.^[3] From 2007 until 2011 Cochran was an assistant professor at the University of California, Riverside, until she joined the United States Geological Survey.^[2]

Research

Cochran's early research was on the impact of the 1999 Hector Mine earthquake.^[4][5] Her subsequent work examined the geographic extent of earthquake damage,^[6] and defined the factors that lead to the 2011 Oklahoma earthquake.^[7] In 2006, Cochran co-foundered of Quake-Catcher Network, a crowd-sourced program that detects earthquakes.^[2] Quake-Cather Network was able to track the 2008 Reno earthquakes.^[1] The original idea was to use laptops to track earthquakes,^[8][9] but as the project evolved it outfitted citizen scientists with seismometers which are used to detect earthquakes.^[10][11] Later, Cochran was the lead scientist for ShakeAlert, an early warning system for earthquakes in the western United States.^[12][13]

Selected publications

• Keranen, Katie M.; Savage, Heather M.; Abers, Geoffrey A.; Cochran, Elizabeth S. (2013-06-01). "Potentially induced earthquakes in Oklahoma, USA: Links between wastewater injection and the 2011 Mw 5.7 earthquake sequence". Geology. 41 (6): 699–702. Bibcode:2013Geo....41..699K. doi:10.1130/G34045.1. ISSN 0091-7613.
• Cochran, Elizabeth S.; Vidale, John E.; Tanaka, Sachiko (2004-11-12). "Earth Tides Can Trigger Shallow Thrust Fault Earthquakes". Science. 306 (5699): 1164–1166. Bibcode:2004Sci...306.1164C. doi:10.1126/science.1103961. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 15498971. S2CID 45644672.
• Keranen, Katie M.; Savage, Heather M.; Abers, Geoffrey A.; Cochran, Elizabeth S. (2013). "Potentially induced earthquakes in Oklahoma, USA: Links between wastewater injection and the 2011 Mw 5.7 earthquake sequence". Geology. 41 (6): 699–702. Bibcode:2013Geo....41..699K. doi:10.1130/G34045.1. ISSN 1943-2682.
• Cochran, Elizabeth S.; Lawrence, Jesse F.; Christensen, Carl; Jakka, Ravi S. (2009-01-01). "The Quake-Catcher Network: Citizen Science Expanding Seismic Horizons". Seismological Research Letters. 80 (1): 26–30. Bibcode:2009SeiRL..80...26C. doi:10.1785/gssrl.80.1.26. ISSN 0895-0695.
• Cochran, Elizabeth S.; Li, Yong-Gang; Shearer, Peter M.; Barbot, Sylvain; Fialko, Yuri; Vidale, John E. (2009-04-01). "Seismic and geodetic evidence for extensive, long-lived fault damage zones". Geology. 37 (4): 315–318. Bibcode:2009Geo....37..315C. doi:10.1130/G25306A.1. ISSN 0091-7613.

Awards and honors

In 2006 Cochran received the Doris M. Curtis Outstanding Woman in Science Award from the Geological Society of America.^[14] In 2010 Cochran received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, which is an honor given to early career scientists in the United States.^[15]