Dr Jamie Ward

Profile

I completed my PhD in global seismology in September 2021 and am now a postdoc at the University of Leeds continuing to work on mantle structure in comparison to hypothetical Earth models generated by geodynamic simulations. 

Research interests

I am interested in analysing the Earth and its processes using waves. My previous work has focused on using time series data from earthquakes recorded at stations around the world to analyse structures in the Earth’s mantle such as plumes, subducted slabs and other structures. I have automated array seismology techniques to allow much larger datasets to be processed and measurements of small scale structures to be made on a global scale.

My current work is part of a larger project to determine an accurate present-day Earth which can then be used to constrain what the Earth looked like in the past. My role involves testing Earth models generated by geodynamic simulations. This involves predicting seismic anisotropy in the Earth’s lower mantle from mantle flow fields generated by geodynamic modelling and comparing them with real-world observations.  Furthermore, I will be using forward modelling codes to propagate waves through these Earth models to then compare with observations of my previous work of multipathing in the mantle. Multipathing only occurs when a wave interacts with a sufficiently sharp change in properties so can be used to identify the boundaries of mantle structure.  

In addition to this, I have interests in other regions of seismology which include:

• Using the ambient noise field in the Earth (sometimes described as the Earth’s “hum”) to analyse the interior of the Earth in never before sampled regions;
• the application of recurrent and convolutional neural networks to seismograms and record sections to automate quality control and identify complexity or possibly phenomena such as reflectors, scatterers or multipathing;
• studying azimuthal anisotropy from array analysis multipathed surface waves;
• locate and analyse icequakes, storms or other surface phenomena using beamforming.

If you are interested in any of the above, feel free to drop me an email. 

Qualifications

• PhD in Global Seismology - University of Leeds
• MSci Geophysics - Imperial College London

Research groups and institutes

• Institute of Geophysics and Tectonics