Research

Seismology is the study of the composition, structure, and state of the Earth’s interior. It encompasses investigating the genesis of earthquakes and the processes of earthquake wave propagation within and along the surface of the Earth.

Outstanding seismological and geodynamic questions. What are the driving forces of plate tectonics? What is the role of hot upwellings in the thermal evolution of the Earth? Does the Earth's mantle convect globally, or layered? What is the mechanism of deep earthquakes? What constrains the largest depth of earthquakes? What can ground motions actually resolve in imaging the Earth's interior? How do we formulate a robust imaging technique for an ill-posed inverse problem?

We address a number of these questions by using seismic waves of all kinds and wavelengths to image, with the help of seismic tomography, the three dimensional structure of the inner parts of the Earth. This relatively young research method has already proved to be by far the most important geophysical method to image and understand the structure of the Earth’s interior. An important research focus is to improve and extend this method.

Planetary science uses a broad range of data from a variety of disciplines (geophysics, petrology, geochemistry, and geodynamics) to constrain the composition, origin, and evolution of the Earth and the terrestrial planets.