The Mathematics Program will host a presentation by Dr. Jared Whitehead from the BYU Mathematics Department on Wednesday, March 29 at 3:00 pm in SCB 300/301. He will be present about Tsunamis in Indonesia and the use of mathematical and statistical methods to investigate the earthquake source.
Dr. Jared Whitehead
Dr. Jared Whitehead is on the mathematics faculty at Brigham Young University. He earned his Ph.D. in applied and interdisciplinary mathematics from the University of Michigan in 2012. Following graduate school, he completed a postdoc at the Center for Nonlinear Studies at Los Alamos National Laboratory, working primarily with the ocean modeling group there. He is primarily motivated by applications in the physical sciences that tie into partial differential equations (PDE) and the use of data and modern observations. He is always looking to recruit more students (undergraduate and graduate).
The Mathematics of Historical Seismology in Indonesia
We use modern mathematical and statistical methods to investigate the earthquake source of historically recorded tsunamis in Indonesia. Using a Bayesian approach and relying on very anecdotal observational accounts we simulate over 100K tsunamis to identify a posterior distribution that appears to describe the causal earthquake for a tsunami recorded in 1852 in the Banda Sea. Further extensions of this approach to other historical events are also discussed as well as the shortcomings of the developed method and proposed solutions. We will also discuss the benefits of graduate school in the mathematical sciences.