Elizabeth Cochran

Elizabeth Cochran
EducationUniversity of California, Los Angeles
Scientific career
ThesisEarthquake rupture initiation and fault structure : I. triggering of earthquakes by Earth tides : II. seismic anisotrophy near the Hector Mine rupture : III. post-seismic displacements observed with InSAR (2005)

Elizabeth Scott Cochran is a seismologist known for her work on early warning systems for earthquakes and human-induced earthquakes.

Education and career

As a middle-school student living in California, Cochran experienced the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Cochran has a B.S. from the University of California, Santa Barbara (2000) and went on to earn an M.Sc.(2003) and a Ph.D. (2005) from the University of California. Following her Ph.D., Cochran was a postdoctoral investigator at the University of California, San Diego. From 2007 until 2011, Cochran was an assistant professor at the University of California, Riverside, until she joined the United States Geological Survey.

Research

Cochran's early research was on the impact of the 1999 Hector Mine earthquake. Her subsequent work examined the geographic extent of earthquake damage, and defined the factors that lead to the 2011 Oklahoma earthquake. In 2006, Cochran co-foundered of Quake-Catcher Network, a crowd-sourced program that detects earthquakes. Quake-Catcher Network was able to track the 2008 Reno earthquakes. The original idea was to use laptops to track earthquakes, but as the project evolved it outfitted citizen scientists with seismometers, which are used to detect earthquakes. Later, Cochran was the lead scientist for ShakeAlert, an early warning system for earthquakes in the western United States.

Awards and honors

In 2006, Cochran received the Doris M. Curtis Outstanding Woman in Science Award from the Geological Society of America. In 2010, Cochran received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, which is an honor given to early career scientists in the United States. In 2025, Cochran received the Joanne Simpson Medal from the American Geophysical Union.

Selected publications

References

  1. 1 2 "USGS scientist works on earthquake early warning and monitoring systems". The Washington Post. September 2, 2014. Retrieved June 29, 2022.
  2. 1 2 3 "Elizabeth S Cochran | U.S. Geological Survey". www.usgs.gov. 8 October 2019. Retrieved 2022-06-30.
  3. ↑ "ORCID". orcid.org. Retrieved 2022-06-30.
  4. ↑ Cochran, Elizabeth S.; Vidale, John E.; Li, Yong-Gang (2003). "Near-fault anisotropy following the Hector Mine earthquake: HECTOR MINE ANISOTROPY". Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth. 108 (B9). doi:10.1029/2002JB002352.
  5. ↑ Cochran, Elizabeth S.; Vidale, John E.; Tanaka, Sachiko (2004-11-12). "Earth Tides Can Trigger Shallow Thrust Fault Earthquakes". Science. 306 (5699): 1164–1166. Bibcode:2004Sci...306.1164C. doi:10.1126/science.1103961. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 15498971. S2CID 45644672.
  6. ↑ Cochran, Elizabeth S.; Li, Yong-Gang; Shearer, Peter M.; Barbot, Sylvain; Fialko, Yuri; Vidale, John E. (2009-04-01). "Seismic and geodetic evidence for extensive, long-lived fault damage zones". Geology. 37 (4): 315–318. Bibcode:2009Geo....37..315C. doi:10.1130/G25306A.1. ISSN 0091-7613.
  7. ↑ Sumy, Danielle F.; Cochran, Elizabeth S.; Keranen, Katie M.; Wei, Maya; Abers, Geoffrey A. (2014). "Observations of static Coulomb stress triggering of the November 2011 M 5.7 Oklahoma earthquake sequence". Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth. 119 (3): 1904–1923. Bibcode:2014JGRB..119.1904S. doi:10.1002/2013JB010612. ISSN 2169-9313.
  8. ↑ Vance, Erik. "Scientists Want Your MacBook for Earthquake Detection". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved 2022-06-30.
  9. ↑ DiMassa, Cara Mia (2010-03-22). "Scientist recruits quake-catching army". Arkansas Online. Retrieved 2022-06-30.
  10. ↑ Vastag, Brian (2011-09-11). "Explorations". Austin American-Statesman. pp. , . Retrieved 2022-06-30.
  11. ↑ Benson, K.; Schlachter, S.; Estrada, T.; Taufer, M.; Lawrence, J.; Cochran, E. (2013-10-01). "On the powerful use of simulations in the Quake-Catcher Network to efficiently position low-cost earthquake sensors". Future Generation Computer Systems. Including Special sections: Advanced Cloud Monitoring Systems & The fourth IEEE International Conference on e-Science 2011 — e-Science Applications and Tools & Cluster, Grid, and Cloud Computing. 29 (8): 2128–2142. doi:10.1016/j.future.2013.04.012. ISSN 0167-739X. S2CID 1734586.
  12. ↑ Cochran, Elizabeth S.; Kohler, Monica D.; Given, Douglas D.; Guiwits, Stephen; Andrews, Jennifer; Meier, Men-Andrin; Ahmad, Mohammad; Henson, Ivan; Hartog, Renate; Smith, Deborah (2017-12-06). "Earthquake Early Warning ShakeAlert System: Testing and Certification Platform". Seismological Research Letters. 89 (1): 108–117. doi:10.1785/0220170138. ISSN 0895-0695. S2CID 135100928.
  13. ↑ Kohler, Monica D.; Cochran, Elizabeth S.; Given, Doug; Guiwits, Steve; Neuhauser, Doug; Henson, Ivan; Hartog, Renate; Bodin, Paul; Kress, Victor; Thompson, Stephen; Felizardo, Claude (2017-12-06). "Earthquake Early Warning ShakeAlert System: West Coast Wide Production Prototype". Seismological Research Letters. 89 (1): 99–107. doi:10.1785/0220170140. ISSN 0895-0695. S2CID 134793266.
  14. ↑ "Past Awardees". www.geosociety.org. Retrieved 2022-06-30.
  15. ↑ "President Obama Honors Outstanding Early-Career Scientists". whitehouse.gov. 2011-09-26. Retrieved 2022-06-30.
  16. ↑ "Joanne Simpson Medal". AGU - American Geophysical Union. Retrieved 2025-09-25.