Carnegie Fellow Wen-che Yu joined DTM on 24 September. For his Ph.D. thesis research at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Yu studied the seismic velocity and attenuation structure of the Earth’s inner core. By means of differential travel times and ratios of amplitudes between compressional waves transmitted through the inner core and compressional waves that reflected off the inner core boundary or propagated only through the bottom of the Earth’s outer core, Yu advanced our understanding of the systematic differences between the “eastern” and “western” hemispheres of the inner core. In related work, Yu modeled complex waveforms of P waves that sampled the top of the inner core beneath Africa and interpreted regional variations in inner core anisotropy.

While at DTM, Yu plans to study repeating earthquakes in the global subduction zones to determine high-precision relative earthquake locations and temporal property changes of the Earth.