Carnegie Fellow Chin-Wu Chen arrived at DTM this month after completing his Ph.D. in geophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in October. His thesis addressed the assembly and evolution of cratonic lithosphere though seismic imaging of the lithosphere of the Slave craton in northwestern Canada. Specifically, Chen used surface wave inversion to constrain shear-wave velocity structure and anisotropy of the lithosphere, and receiver function analysis to delineate seismic discontinuities in the lithosphere. He synthesized these imaging results with magnetotelluric and petrological analyses to better understand the mechanism responsible for the formation of the Slave craton. In addition, Chen developed a deconvolution application for effectively processing large amounts of seismic array data.

At DTM, Chen plans to continue studying the origin of cratonic lithosphere by integrating geophysical, geochemical, and petrological data. He will also combine the new data processing technique with existing imaging methods to analyze large array data sets, such as that from the USArray and other experiments in order to better characterize the underlying crustal and upper mantle structures.