Martin van Driel

SM Seismology

The 2018 Division Outstanding Early Career Scientist Award is awarded to Martin van Driel for exceptional research in modelling and understanding global broadband seismic-wave propagation.

Following his early research on rotational and volcano seismology, Martin van Driel developed the first numerical tool for the simulation of seismic wave propagation across the complete frequency range observed on the global scale. For this, he independently developed theories for fully anisotropic wave propagation in axisymmetric media and the broadband simulation of visco-elastic attenuation. This work, largely performed during his PhD, constitutes a breakthrough in computational seismology. Van Driel also invested much energy into making his codes user-friendly and available to the community (www.instaseis.net) for teaching and research.

He is one of very few seismologists who perfectly master both theory and data, which is reflected in the topical bandwidth of his publications. This breadth combined with his unresting and unselfish effort to advance the seismological community make him a very well-deserved recipient of this award.