Emily Brodsky is a professor and earthquake physicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research focuses on connecting empirical observations of earthquakes with fundamental physical processes. She is particularly interested in issues of earthquake initiation and the forces present on the fault during propagation. These studies require tools from seismology, materials science, hydrogeology and structural geology.

Prof. Brodsky earned her A.B. from Harvard in 1995, Ph.D. from Caltech in 2001 and was a 2001 Miller Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the recipient of the inaugural 2005 Charles Richter Early Career award from the Seismological Society of America, the 2008 James Macelwane Medal from the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the 2019 Gutenberg Lectureship and is a both a GSA and AGU Fellow as well as an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences. She was selected as a Distinguished Lecturer for the NSF Earthscope program, the Geo-Prisms program, International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) and the National Science Board. She has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles and presented over 150 invited lectures talks in 30 states and 13 countries. Her work was been featured in major press outlets such as the BBC, NPR, Time Magazine, NY Times, Nature, Reuters, LA Times and The Wall Street Journal.

She has served on the Board of Directors of the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) since 2004.

SCEC Participation

SCEC Board of Directors, Core Institution Member (2004 - 2023)
SCEC Board of Directors, Vice-Chair (2020 - 2022)
SCEC Executive Committee, Member (2020 - 2022)
SCEC Mentor (2004, 2009, 2012, 2020)