I am a 3rd year PhD candidate of the Department of Earth and Space Sciences at the University of Washington, in Seattle. I collaborate with members from the glaciology group, the seismology group and the Polar Science Center at the Applied Physics Lab.
My research primarily concerns the transient mechanical response of ice sheets and glaciers to surface meltwater. My field areas include both Greenland and Antarctica. In Greenland, I am integrating space-borne observations with seismic data to construct a high resolution history of basal sliding for the Greenland Ice Sheet. The recent report [Das & Joughin, 2008] that speedup events follow drainage from supraglacial lakes there suggest that sliding models for alpine glaciers may be representative of sliding of Greenland's Ice Sheets when high meltwater volumes are present. In Antarctica, I am using seismic and meterological data to constrain possible meltwater effects upon calving rates and possible basal sliding of Taylor Glacier, a dry-based polar glacier in the Dry Valleys. Taylor is observed to have a brine subglacial hydraulic system that may permit as least some basal sliding in certain locations.
In each component of my research, I use and develop signal processing methods involving elements of vector space projections. A continuing interest of mine is in designing hilbert spaces based upon the filtering properties of their inner product.
My Greenland research is currently supported by the NESSF NASA fellowship program.
Education
In addition to my PhD Geophysics work, I am receiving a Masters in Applied Mathematics in December 2008. My application focus was concerned tailoring Hilbert spaces to seismic applications via designing inner products with special filtering properties on the respective basis functions.
I graduated Magna Cum Laude from WSU in May 2004 with a B.S. in physics. My focus as an undergraduate was in shock wave propagation in alloys. I did research in a couple of labs, including Mark Kuzyk's nonlinear optics lab, and the Institute for Shock Physics. I spent a year in the UW Applied Math department prior to joining the Geophysics program. Aside from science, I enjoy spending time with my wife, doing anything outside, and seeing punk rock shows.
