The second episode of the video series U Research What? brings in a guest who studies the ground moving under our feet. Video reporter Karolyn Deiss interviews Justin Revenaugh, head of the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, about 3 things: his research, how students choose a major and Rate My Professor, the review site every undergrad has checked at least once before registration.
Deiss recorded and produced the episode. Oscar Carabell edited and produced it, and Sophie Nemo made the graphics. The earthquake simulations in the video came from Revenaugh himself.
Revenaugh studies earthquakes. He's a seismologist who uses earthquake waves to image the deep structure of the Earth, according to his faculty profile. His work covers how scattering in the crust near faults relates to the way earthquakes start, mid-mantle discontinuities between 900 and 2,000 km down, detecting water in the mantle, and ultra-low velocity zones at the core-mantle boundary.
He has been in charge of the department since July 1, 2022, when the College of Science and Engineering named him head of what was then called the Winchell School of Earth and Environmental Sciences. Before that he was the department's director of graduate studies, the college said.
He has been in Minneapolis much longer than that. Revenaugh joined the U in 2003 after teaching Earth sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he also directed the Center for the Study of Imaging and Dynamics of the Earth. He has a bachelor's degree in geology and geophysics from Michigan State University and a Ph.D. in geophysics from MIT, which he finished in 1989.
If the episode makes you curious about a department that spends its time looking thousands of kilometers below the surface, the full video is on the series page.
