Yehuda Ben-Zion is the Director of the Statewide California Earthquake Center and Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Southern California. His research is focused on physics of earthquakes and faults using a variety of theoretical tools and observations. Current interests include processes leading to large earthquakes, high resolution imaging of fault zones and the crust, earthquake source properties, near-fault data, composition of continuous seismic waveforms, temporal changes of subsurface properties, dynamic ruptures in geologically relevant structures, brittle damage rheology, analysis of seismic hazards, earthquake forecasting.

Ben-Zion is an elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and was awarded the Humboldt Research Prize in Geophysics, the Beno Gutenberg Medal of the European Geosciences Union, and the Mercator Fellowship from the German Research Society. He published over 325 scientific papers and edited eight books. Ben-Zion was an editor of the Journal of Geophysical Research (2015-2022), was on the editorial board of other journals, and has served as President of the IUGG Mathematical Geophysics Committee (2011-2020).

Ben-Zion received a B.Sc. in physics and geology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1982 and Ph.D. in geophysics from the University of Southern California in 1990. Ben-Zion was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and has held visiting Professor positions at institutions in the U.S., Japan, Germany, France, Norway, Australia, and China. He has supervised over 50 graduate students and postdoctoral scholars.

SCEC Participation

Current Roles

SCEC Director (2019 - Present)
SCEC Executive Committee, Chair (2019 - Present)
SCEC Executive Committee, Member (2019 - Present)

Past Roles

SCEC Board of Directors, Chair (2019)
SCEC Science Planning Committee, Group Leader (2016 - 2018)