Lucy Flesch is a geodynamicist who’s research is focused on continental plate boundary zones where plate-tectonic theory tends to break down. Dr. Flesch seeks to answer fundamental questions relating to: 1) quantifying the forces driving deformation in continental lithosphere, especially deformation far inboard from a plate edge; 2) determining the contribution from the convecting mantle to surface motions; 3) assessing the level of coupling between the lithosphere and asthenosphere; and 4) determining the strength of the continental lithosphere. She addresses these issues through numerical modeling that integrates observed data from geology, geodesy, and seismology. Dr. Flesch received her B.S. in physics from Beloit College as well as M.S. and PhD degrees in geophysics from Stony Brook University. She was a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, DC, before joining the faulty at Purdue University.

Jim Evans grew up in the iron-mining district of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and was first drawn to the geosciences via the exotic persona of “geologists” who traveled the world. He received B.S. Geology and B.S. Engineering degrees from the University of Michigan in 1981, and M.S. and PhD Geology degrees from Texas A&M University in 1987. Jim has been at Utah State University since 1987, where he has received numerous awards for his teaching and research. His research focuses on a range of fault and fractured-rock related questions in all rock types across a range of P-T-pore-fluid conditions, including: the nature and implications of seismic slip in faults; energy budgets of earthquakes and rock deformation; hydrogeology of faulted and fractured rocks; the petrophysics of deformed and altered rocks as measured with borehole tools; geothermal processes; the microscopy and geochemistry of faults and shear zones; and energy resources. Jim has worked on several fault-drilling projects, including EarthScope's San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth (SAFOD), and examined field sites in North America, Japan, Taiwan, and Vietnam. He was the chief editor of the Journal of Structural Geology from 2002-2007, and is a founding editor of the GSA journal Lithosphere.

Bridget Smith-Konter began her science career with an interest in planetary physics in college, only to discover four years later that it was planet Earth that would truly “move” her. After receiving a B.S. in Physics and Astronomy from Northern Arizona University in 1999, Bridget began her PhD studies at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) of the University of California-San Diego. On October 16, 1999, less than 1 month after beginning graduate school, the M7.1 Hector Mine earthquake struck southern California - and it was this event that jolted Bridget’s interest in crustal deformation modeling of the San Andreas Fault System. After completing her PhD in 2005, she continued to pursue terrestrial crustal deformation research as a postdoctoral fellow at SIO. In 2007 she joined the Planetary Ices Group at Caltech/JPL, where she used her 3-D semi-analytic deformation and stress models to study faulting on icy satellites. Bridget is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at El Paso. Her research investigates vertical plate boundary deformation in California, techniques to integrate GPS and InSAR data, and shear failure models of icy faults on Saturn’s moon Enceladus and Jupiter’s moon Europa. She was recently awarded an NSF Early Career grant for her research involving EarthScope geodetic and paleoseismic data to develop 1,000-year earthquake cycle stress evolution models of the San Andreas fault system. Bridget currently serves on the EarthScope Education and Outreach Subcommittee and is actively involved in communicating the EarthScope “message” to public audiences by developing unique visualization products and installing several IRIS Active Earth interactive kiosks in her local community.

Literally born in a rock quarry in Delaware, Terry Plank had no other choice than to become a geologist. After mapping quartz diorites in high school and quartz monzonites while an undergraduate at Dartmouth College, Terry moved on to study volcanoes at mid-ocean ridges and subduction zones while getting her PhD at Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. As a post-doc at Cornell University, and a faculty member at the University of Kansas and Boston University, she studied cycling of mass and fluids through subduction zones, from oceanic input to volcanic output, and contributed to laboratory studies to see what happens in between. Terry then moved back to Columbia University in 2008 where she now focuses on the volatile contents of magmas, specifically how water drives magma genesis, ascent and eruption. Field work has taken her to the Aleutian Islands, Nicaragua and out to sea. A fellow of the American Geophysical Union, Mineralogical Society of America and Geochemical Society, Terry has also served on the USArray Advisory Committee and the EarthScope Science Steering Committee. She is excited by EarthScope opportunities to combine petrology with seismology in exploring how melting occurs under the continents and what creates the lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary.

Bill Ellsworth is a seismologist interested in problems of seismicity, seismotectonics, probabilistic earthquake forecasting, and earthquake source processes. After graduating with a B.S. in Physics and M.S. in geophysics from Stanford University in 1971 he joined the earthquake research group at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California, which has been his professional home for the past 40 years. In 1974 he travelled east to the Massachussetts Institute of Technology, where he earned his PhD in geophysics in 1977. Bill's research focuses on questions of fault structure and earthquake source processes over a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. Over the course of his career, he has balanced his personal research with community service that has expanded opportunities and resources for seismology in the U.S. and around the world. He was a founder of the PASSCAL Program of IRIS, co-principal investigator of the San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth (SAFOD) component of EarthScope, and currently serves on the steering committee of the Advanced National Seismic System (ANSS) and the National Earthquake Prediction Evaluation Council. Bill is a past President of the Seismological Society of America, a fellow of the American Geophysical Union, and recipient of the Distinguished Service Award of the Department of the Interior.