Rate My Professor Susan Beck

Beck's research focuses on using broadband seismology to investigate mountain belts, subduction zones, and earthquakes, particularly the tectonic evolution of the North and South American Cordilleras and Anatolia. She leads the Global Seismology and Tectonics Group and directs major international projects including CAUGHT (Central Andes Uplift and Geodynamics of High Plateaus), PULSE (Peru Flat Slab), SIEMBRA (Argentina Flat Slab), MIMOSA (Multi-scale Imaging of Modern Orogenic South America), CDCAT (Central Anatolian Tectonics), and others. Through extensive seismic deployments across the Andes in Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Chile, and Argentina, her work has revealed the thick felsic composition of orogenic crust beneath the Altiplano, processes of lithospheric delamination, crustal shortening, and the dynamics of flat-slab subduction. Key publications include "The great Sumatra-Andaman earthquake of 26 December 2004" (Science, 2005), "The nature of orogenic crust in the central Andes" (Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, 2002), "Crustal-thickness variations in the central Andes" (Geology, 1996), and "Segmented African lithosphere beneath the Anatolian region inferred from teleseismic P-wave tomography" (Geophysical Journal International, 2011). Beck has received the 2020 American Geophysical Union Walter H. Bucher Medal, 2017 Geological Society of America Woollard Award, 2023 University of Arizona Research, Innovation & Impact Women of Impact Award, AGU Fellowship (2014), GSA Fellowship (2015), and served as Chair of the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology Board of Directors (2008-2010).