Posted September 15, 2008
Jeffrey H. Marsh is a PhD student in the Department of Earth Sciences. His dissertation research addresses how the strength of large faults (and their deeper shear zones) in Earth’s crust evolves with time and progressive tectonic plate motions. This question is at the core of cutting-edge research in fault mechanics, and has important societal implications owing to the hazards posed by seismogenic faults like the San Andreas Fault in California . Jeff passed his comprehensive examination and advanced to candidacy in the fall of 2007, 18 months after arriving. In the 2.5 years that Jeff has been at the University of Maine , he has attracted more than $10,000 in competitive research funding from organizations like the Geological Society of America and the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. This year, Jeff won the 2008 Outstanding Research Grant Proposal Award by the Geological Society of America (one of 20 recipients in a field of 302 grant awardees drawn from 570 applicants). He simultaneously won the Exceptional Merit Award for research grant proposal, Structural Geology and Tectonics Division, Geological Society of America (one of 3 awards). Jeff has also won awards for conference presentations, and published six abstracts from his work at UM. Jeff (with advisor Scott Johnson) is currently a recipient of a University of Maine Doctoral Research Fellowship.
