John Tobeck on the left and Alan on the right at the instrument center for iMUSH in Castle Rock, WA.
Alan is from Houston, Texas. He is a professor at Rice University and was the coordinator for the deployment of the seismographs and the "shots" or explosions around Mt. St. Helens.
Education:
Stanford University, MS, PhD
University of South Caroline, BS
Here are his responses to some questions:
What have you studied in science or are currently studying?
Seismology, Geophysics, Earth Science.
I've done active source (explosion) seismic projects in Alaska (2), California (4), Canada-Montana-Wyoming-Colorado-New Mexico (1), Wyoming-Colorado-New Mexico(1), Utah (1), Colorado(1), Venezuela and the Leeward Antilles(1), Morocco (1).
I've also done passive seismic experiments (i.e. earthquake recordings) in Spain-Morocco, Venezuela and the Leeward Antilles.
Do you have any ideas on what a middle school student could do in Science right now?
Monitor local seismicity: This would require tapping into the PNSN station feed and examining where and when earthquakes occur in the Pacific Northwest.
What or who inspired you to get into Science in the first place? What do you like about Science?
I had a number of interests as a teenager that pushed me toward a career in Earth Sciences: Backpacking, surfing, and photography, which together got me interested in mountains, waves, and images. My career has been making images of the interiors of mountains using seismic waves.
I had an excellent high school chemistry teacher, Mrs Hayden, who encouraged me to study science. As an undergrad I had an excellent undergrad advisor, Professor Pradeep Talwani, who employed me as a research assistant to monitor seismicity in South Carolina and directed my undergraduate research project. He played an important role in my decision to go to Stanford as a grad student, and helped me get admitted to the Stanford geophysics program.
What advice do you have for a middle school student who is interested in becoming a scientist?
Try out as many different things as you can, and identify the ones you enjoy the most. Compare what you enjoy to what different professions offer. If you have a technical bent, and enjoy analytical thinking and math, science is a good choice. Approach math as a very precise foreign language to learn the nuances of, not as a system of rules to be memorized.
Careers last a long time, you should enjoy what you do. The worst fate I can imagine is having a job I didn't enjoy, and just counting down the days until I retire so that my "real" life could begin. My real life is what I do everyday.
Alan added this:
I'm still amazed that I get to do experiments to image mountain belts to understand how they form, and someone pays me for this. It is an incredible privilege. I also get to work with people who are extremely intelligent and love what they do, which makes my work more fun.
I enjoy teaching because it gives me the opportunity to think about things in different ways, my understanding of my field is always growing as a consequence. I also like to see students catch on, and they almost always start viewing things differently than I do, so I learn from them.