UNM assistant professor Eric Lindsey receives NSF CAREER Award

Eric Lindsey, an assistant professor in the UNM Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences, has received a prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award, one of the agency's highest honors for early-career faculty. He joins six other UNM faculty members who have earned the award after participating in the School of Engineering's NSF CAREER Writing Cohort.

Lindsey's award follows his participation in the NSF CAREER Writing Cohort, a faculty development program led by Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs Eva Chi, Hannah Yohalem, assistant director, Research Strategy & Programming and Faculty Research Support Officer Isela Balli. Launched in February 2025, the workshop series helps faculty strengthen proposals for the highly competitive CAREER program.

Lindsey's research focuses on geodesy, which involves measuring how Earth's shape changes over time using satellite technology. He uses this data to answer questions about plate tectonics, earthquake and volcanic hazards, and earthquake physics. Using highly precise measurements of the gradual motion of Earth's surface, he studies how tectonic, volcanic, and human-caused processes deform the planet over time.

Lindsey received a five-year, $638,000 CAREER Award for his project:

From Kinematics to Physics: A Global, Time-Dependent Investigation of Megathrust Frictional Locking

Lindsey's project seeks to improve scientists' understanding of the forces that generate some of the world's most destructive earthquakes and tsunamis.

Large earthquakes and tsunamis that occur along subduction zones-where one tectonic plate slides beneath another-are among the world's most destructive natural hazards. These events threaten millions of people living in coastal communities, yet scientists still have limited understanding of how stress builds and is released along the shallow offshore portions of these faults, where many tsunamis originate.

This research will improve scientists' ability to understand and better forecast earthquake and tsunami hazards by studying how these massive faults behave beneath the seafloor. The project will develop new physics-based models that identify which sections of subduction zone faults are most likely to produce damaging earthquakes and how stresses on those faults change over time. Researchers will create the first comprehensive global atlas of fault behavior across major subduction zones, allowing scientists to compare regions around the world and identify the geological features that make some faults more hazardous than others.

The project will also examine how faults respond to changes in stress caused by slow earthquakes- gradual fault movements that occur over days to months without the strong shaking of traditional earthquakes. By combining new seafloor measurements with advanced computer modeling, the research will improve understanding of the conditions that can lead to large earthquakes and tsunamis.

Beyond advancing earthquake science, the project will strengthen education and workforce development in the geosciences. The research team will develop a new university course, host a summer workshop for undergraduate students, and create a free, self-paced online course to help students and professionals build computational and data analysis skills. Together, these efforts will expand access to geoscience education while supporting the next generation of researchers working to better understand and reduce natural hazard risks.

"Understanding how stress builds and changes along these faults is essential to improving earthquake and tsunami hazard assessments," Lindsey said. "This project gives us an opportunity to combine new observations from the seafloor with advanced modeling to better understand how these systems work."

Learn more about Lindsey's NSF CAREER Award project, From Kinematics to Physics: A Global, Time-Dependent Investigation of Megathrust Frictional Locking.