Seth Stein is Deering Professor of Geological Sciences  Emeritus at Northwestern. He graduated from MIT in 1975 (B.S) and Caltech (Ph.D) in 1978. His research interests are in plate tectonics, earthquake seismology, earthquake hazards, and space geodesy. He has been awarded the Walter H. Bucher and James B. Macelwane Medals of the American Geophysical Union, the George Woollard Award of the Geological Society of America, the Stephan Mueller Medal of the European Geosciences Union, the Price Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, and a Humboldt Foundation Research Award. He has been elected a foreign member of the Academy of Europe, a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and Geological Society of America, and named to the Institute for Scientific Information Highly Cited Researchers list.

He was one of the organizers of EarthScope, a national initiative to dramatically advance our knowledge of the structure and evolution of North America, served as Scientific Director of the UNAVCO consortium of universities using GPS for earth science, and been Visiting Senior Scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

He was president of the American Geophysical Union’s natural hazards section, authored a recent book on natural hazard mitigation science and policy, a general audience book about earthquakes in the central U.S., coauthored a widely used seismology textbook, has edited six other books, and was editor of the Journal of Geophysical Research. He started Northwestern’s Environmental Science program, and authored more than 150 scientific publications. He is active in the geophysical community’s public education programs, works extensively with news media and museums, and completed a national tour as an Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology/Seismological Society of America Distinguished Lecturer, speaking on “Giant earthquakes: why, where, when, and what we can do.”

Stein works extensively with his wife, Carol, professor emerita of Earth and environmental sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In addition to joint research, the two recently endowed a graduate fellowship through the Hertz Foundation and an award for early career geophysicists through the Geological Society of America as part of “giving back” to the Earth sciences community.

Presenting the new GSA Geophysics & Geodynamics division early career award to Richard Bono of Florida State University.