The University of Washington’s College of the Environment is pleased to announce that Professor Ken Creager will serve as Chair of the Department of Earth and Space Sciences for a two-year term that began on July 1, 2018.
During the search process, Creager — who has served in a number of leadership roles within Earth and Space Sciences and is regarded as a trusted, respected leader within the Department and College — emerged as the Advisory Search Committee’s top choice to lead the Department in the coming years.
“The Department of Earth and Space Sciences and its community are exceptional, and I am excited to have the opportunity to work closely with Ken to help maintain the rich and rigorous research and education programming in the Department within an environment that welcomes and supports all faculty, staff and students,” Lisa J. Graumlich, dean of the College of the Environment, said.
Creager, a geophysicist, has harnessed the seismic waves of thousands of tiny quakes to unravel details of slow slip events that occur on the plate interface of the Cascadia Subduction Zone. He is part of a multidisciplinary field experiment to image magma under Mount St. Helens called iMUSH and is working on the West Coast-wide Shake Alert Earthquake Early Warning system. Creager has received support from the National Science Foundation for his research and was named a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 2011.
Many thanks to the outgoing Earth and Space Sciences Chair Bruce Nelson, who has been a passionate and positive advocate for the Department and the College.
“I am particularly appreciative of his work to make Earth and Space Sciences, the College and the University of Washington a more diverse, inclusive place,” Graumlich said. “I’m also thankful for his advocacy for rigorous, hands-on learning experiences for our students and his creativity in developing innovative partnerships to create research opportunities and capacity with limited resources.”
