Senior Scientist technology
As a senior seismologist I am working in the groups Induced Seismicity, Seismotectonics, and Earthquake Monitoring of the SED. My main interests are small earthquakes - the ones you normally do not feel - and how to monitor and analyze them. These microearthquakes are great tools to study the physics of earthquakes and the processes that drive seismicity. In Switzerland they occur in natural sequences driven by tectonic processes, and typically cluster in time and space (-> earthquake swarms).
Also man-made microearthquakes that occur as a response to geotechnical operations (e.g. tunneling, mining, impoundmant of water reservoirs, or deep fluid injection) have happened in Switzerland. One of my duties at the SED is to coordinate the project GeoBest, which aims to support deep geothermal pilot projects in Switzerland with the necessary seismic monitoring of natural and induced seismicity, and to provide cantonal and federal authorities with guidelines on how to handle seismic hazard in the framework of the environmental risk assessment.
Before I joined the SED in late 2006 I worked at the University of Munich (LMU), where I was responsible for the installation of the new Bavarian Seismological Network and studied rain-induced earthquake swarms near Bad Reichenhall, SE-Germany. After that I joined the GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam (GFZ) as a project manager of the seismological part of the German Indean Ocean Tsunami Early Warning System (GITWS).