Ken McDermott

TS Tectonics and Structural Geology

The 2013 Outstanding Student Poster (OSP) Award is awarded to Ken McDermott for the poster/PICO entitled:

The Seismic Signature of “Hidden” Faults at Magma-Poor Rifted Margins (McDermott, K.; Reston, T.)

Ken McDermott’s PhD research took place at the University of Birmingham, and he is currently employed as a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at University College Dublin. His PhD thesis is entitled “Mechanisms & Recognition of Hyper-extension at Magma-Poor Rifted Margins” and his main research interests include; the structural evolution of continental rifting leading to break up, polyphase and low-angled normal faulting, the North Atlantic rift system, and reflection seismic modelling. His poster details some of the key outcomes from his PhD research, specifically the seismic expression of the polyphase faulting at rifted margins, a mechanism that goes largely unrecognised at hyper-extended margins due to complex velocity gradients that are predicted to result from the mechanism. The awarded poster presents synthetic seismic data demonstrating some of the key characteristics that may be used to identify the presence of polyphase faulting in seismic data, and also how easily structures can remain “hidden”, ultimately resulting in an incorrect interpretation.