Hi, my name is Richard Alfaro. I am a postdoctoral research associate at Los Alamos National Labs.
I work with the geophysics group here and I work on a lot of different problems related to
seismology. You know, I originally chose geology and I kind of fell into seismology by accident.
I was lucky enough to get what’s called a Keck geology
internship while I was an undergraduate at the University of Texas at El Paso.
And that undergraduate research opportunity took me to Costa Rica where I met a very vibrant and
exciting seismologist. He is the head of Costa Rica’s OVSICORI-UNA, which is their
national seismic observatory. And as part of that undergraduate research opportunity,
he was deploying seismometers on the coast of Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula. And I don’t know,
I just got really excited about it, you know, I got to see a lot of cool instrumentation.
Back then, they still had the machines that would actually record the waveforms on paper,
on these seismic drums and stuff, so you know it was just really exciting seeing all of that stuff.
You know, he was also Hispanic as I was you know, so I was you know kind of inspired to
just explore what seismology was and it just kind of went from there. And he actually
introduced me to the person that became my doctoral advisor,
Aaron Velasco, at the University of Texas El Paso because they had gone to graduate school together,
so that’s kind of how I ended up in seismology. But another part that attracted me to it was
I would say the computer sciencey aspect of it, you know.
So I research a couple of different things as part of my postdoc at the lab. I originally came here
to work on induced seismicity, so that’s just earthquakes caused by human activity, whether
it be related to the oil and gas industry or mining or other things.
So I do work on induced seismicity and that's something that's of major interest to me. Another
thing that I work on, that's always been a passion of mine, is looking at triggered earthquakes,
which are earthquakes that can be triggered via stress changes from other earthquakes, whether
they be distant earthquakes or local earthquakes. And I also am heavily involved in the nuclear test
ban treaty monitoring side of seismology, so that's trying to verify, you know, if
other countries are testing nuclear weapons using seismology, so we use waveforms that are recorded
at different seismometers around the world to essentially discriminate whether we're recording
events that are earthquakes or explosions. Well, you know, I want to say the major
turning point for me was that undergraduate research opportunity, so that's really what got me
involved in seismology in the first place. But what convinced me to go to grad school was
getting in contact with Aaron Velasco, so he ended up being my dissertation mentor. And
you know he, he was also Hispanic and so that was a big part of it for me, you know. I saw him
and it was easy to relate, so and, he gave me, you know, a really good opportunity to pursue
a graduate degree. And I guess, you know, I wasn't that keen on necessarily going to graduate school
at first, but he, you know, he took a lot of time to sort of convince me that it was worthwhile.
And I think it was having him as a mentor that was a major, really a major influence on
convincing me to go. And also you know the whole coding aspect of things was another contributor.
You know, I think the best advice, if you're currently an undergraduate right now, is to seek
a mentor, you know, look for things that you're interested in or find someone that you think,
you know, is someone whose research you think is interesting, get in contact with them even,
even if it's through like a cold email, you know, just send them an email and say I’m interested,
I’d like to talk to you and I think that's the best way to sort of go forward from my experience.
For me, it's always just sort of mapping out an idea and if you're getting stuck,
try to Google things. There are plenty of helpful, you know, books to walk you through coding type
things, but I guess don't be afraid if you're stuck to reach out to someone that is actually
good at coding, and just ask them for their advice or to just, you know, ask a question.
If there are any students that end up watching this and you know would like
some advice or have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me I'm always
open to questions or if you just want advice.