Louis and Elizabeth Scherck Distinguished Professor of the Geological Sciences

Overview

Karen M. Fischer is a seismologist who studies the properties and dynamics of Earth's interior. Her work focuses on understanding the lithosphere and asthenosphere, how these layers are created, deform and evolve over time, and their roles in mantle dynamics and the origins of magmatism.  She and her group analyze and model seismic waveforms to measure the structure of the crust and mantle, including the signatures of present-day and ancient plate boundaries, mantle flow and mantle melting processes. This work involves field-based seismometer experiments and the development of new methods to resolve Earth structure with seismic waves.  Karen has received the Inge Lehmann Medal from the American Geophysical Union, the Harry Fielding Reid Medal from the Seismological Society of America, and the W. S. Jardetzky Medal from Columbia University.  She is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  At Brown her work has been recognized with the Royce Family Professorship in Teaching Excellence, the Karen T. Romer Award for Undergraduate Advising and Mentoring, and the Meenakshi Narain Excellence in Research Mentoring Award.  She earned her B.S. from Yale University and her Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University.

Brown Affiliations