Eric M. Dunham

Geophysics Department Stanford University Mitchell Building, room 325 397 Panama Mall Stanford, CA 94305 tel: (650) 725-6989 FAX: (650) 725-7344 email: edunham@stanford.edu

Population growth is increasingly bringing more people into areas prone to natural hazards, especially earthquakes and volcanic eruptions—as the events of the past few years have demonstrated. Motivated by both the desire to reduce risk and an innate curiosity about how the natural world operates, my personal research focuses on the development and use of physics-based computational simulations to characterize and understand earthquakes and volcanoes. With a background in theoretical physics and mathematics, my approach is to identify the fundamental mechanical processes governing the system, develop numerical models incorporating these processes, validate them using geophysical observations, and then use the models to make predictions about system behavior in parts of parameter space that are poorly understood (e.g., ground shaking at close distances to the fault from large magnitude earthquakes).

Links to several areas of recent (and past) interest:

supershear rupture dynamics

thermal weakening mechanisms

poroelastic effects

rough faults and high frequency ground motion

volcano seismology and eruption dynamics

Publications

Work in Progress (Abstracts, Talks, and Posters from Recent Meetings)

Codes

Curriculum Vitae (follow this link, then click on Curriculum Vitae) or download pdf