The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Award was granted to Professor Dr. Gregory Beroza. It is a recognition of his internationally outstanding research achievements in the geosciences. The award enables a scientific stay at the GFZ. It will further deepen already existing cooperation and also give young scientists in the region a chance to work directly with one of the leading international seismologists.

Gregory Beroza is Professor of Geophysics at the Department of Geophysics at Stanford University in California. He has created fundamental new theories and findings in the study of the dynamic processes associated with the formation of earthquakes and their propagation. Gregory Beroza and his colleagues at Stanford are currently leading in the development and introduction of artificial intelligence and machine learning methods which are used to analyze seismic signals and process large amounts of data. These methods are becoming more and more important due to the continuous improvement of seismological networks and the increasing international data exchange. At GFZ we thus expect important impetus for the application of artificial intelligence in seismology and in the processing of fiber optic measurement data.

Thanks to the research stay of Mr. Beroza in Germany, there is the possibility to deepen the scientific cooperation especially on the topic 'origin and propagation of seismic ruptures' over a broad spatial and temporal scale. This is about the analysis of spatio-temporal patterns of seismicity from different data sets, which were obtained in field studies but also laboratory experiments at GFZ. There is a common research interest in decoding characteristic patterns of seismic data from existing earthquake catalogs, which may provide information about the geometric structure and mechanical parameters of disturbances. This research is relevant for the next generation of earthquake early warning systems, which we are currently developing and, for example, plan to test and use at our Plate Boundary Observatory off Istanbul together with our Turkish partners. Istanbul is at acute risk of earthquakes. A further research topic concerns seismicity induced by the injection of fluids into the subsurface, on which our research group and that of Gregory Beroza are working with approaches that partly complement each other.

Prof. Dr. Gregory Beroza will continue to exert a major influence on research development in the field of seismology and beyond through scientific excellence. We are very pleased that the Humboldt Research Award enables a close cooperation in a thriving science environment in Potsdam.

Scientific contact:
Prof. Dr. Marco Bohnhoff
Section Head Geomechanics and Scientific Drilling
Telegrafenberg
14473 Potsdam
phone: +49 331 288-1327
e-mail: marco.bohnhoff@gfz-potsdam.de

Media contact:
Josef Zens
Head of Public and Media Relations
Helmholtz Centre Potsdam German Research Centre for Geosciences GFZ
Telegrafenberg
14473 Potsdam
phone: +49-331-288-1040
e-mail: josef.zens@gfz-potsdam.de