Prof. Camilla Cattania

Cecil and Ida Green Career Development Assistant Professor of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences

Primary DLC

Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences

MIT Room: 54-418

Areas of Interest and Expertise

Rupture Mechanics
Seismic Cycle
Earthquake Interaction
Operational Earthquake Forecasting

Research Summary

Professor Cattania's group will address a range of questions at different scales, from the mechanics of small repeating events to earthquake interaction on regional and global scale. These problems will be tackled with a combination of numerical, analytical and statistical tools. In addition to furthering the understanding of earthquake physics, Cattania is interested in ways to integrate the state-of-the-art knowledge into practical tools, and in particular models to use in operational earthquake forecasting.

Her research uses theoretical and computational methods to better understand how faults slip during and between earthquakes, with a focus on explaining statistical patterns of seismicity arising from the underlying small scale physics. She has developed new models of aftershock triggering, as well as estimates of earthquake recurrence and predictability. Recently she has focused on the complexity in the geometry of faults and its relation to foreshock sequences, which in the long term might help to improve earthquake forecasting.

Recent Work