New Denman Baynes Senior Student: Sam Wimpenny
Meet Sam Wimpenny, who joined Clare as the new Denman Baynes Senior Student this year.
"I am a Geophysicist based in the Department of Earth Sciences using a diverse range of tools to investigate the mechanics and behaviour of active faults. Earthquakes are generated when active faults break and slip at rates of metres per second. However some faults slip slowly at rates of millimetres per year, and are often assumed to pose far less of a hazard. I am particularly interested in understanding the physical controls on these two different styles of fault motion by studying the temporal evolution of deformation on faults using extremely precise measurements from radar satellites.
Motion on faults also controls how the Earth's brittle crust deforms through time, therefore faults sculpt the Earth's topography and landscape. My research is generally interested in piecing together the aforementioned detailed studies of the behaviour of individual faults with the large-scale evolution of mountain belts and other geological structures.
I will be at Clare from 2018-2022 as the Denman Baynes Senior Student, a post-doctoral research position within the college. My aims during this time are to develop a new understanding of how different faults move throughout their earthquake cycle."
Links:
Video of my work in Peru: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=49&v=fVi9bSsc8KY
Link to a critique of seismic hazard: goo.gl/ssmaHZ
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