Oliver Boyd is a Research Geophysicist with the United States Geological Survey studying multiple issues relevant to seismic hazards. He began with the National Seismic Hazards Modeling Project in Golden, CO in 2004 studying time-dependent seismic hazard in Alaska and producing a seismic hazard analysis of Afghanistan, the latter being done in conjunction with other U.S. Agency for International Development’s reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan. He moved to the USGS office in Memphis, TN in 2007, collocated with the University of Memphis Center for Earthquake Research and Information, to focus on earthquake hazards in the central and eastern United States (CEUS) and returned to Golden in 2013 to work on issues related to earthquake hazards across the conterminous United States, specifically those related to earthquake ground motions as part of the Ground Motion Project.

Much of Oliver’s past research has centered on several aspects of earthquake hazards including time-dependent earthquake probabilities, earthquake magnitude, and earthquake stress drop. He helped revise CEUS source models for the 2008 and 2014 updates of the National Seismic Hazard Model (NSHM) and helped to incorporate basin models in the western United States for the 2018 update of the NSHM. More recently, he has been helping to construct a geology-based National Crustal Model for earthquake hazard studies.

Prior to joining the Survey, Oliver studied Geology at the University of Colorado at Boulder and worked for Geo-Insight in Denver, Colorado and Western Geophysical in Houston, Texas, and on seismic crews in the deserts of Algeria and Egypt. He returned to academics and obtained his Ph.D. in Geophysics from the University of Colorado at Boulder. His graduate research included laboratory experiments of seismic wave attenuation in artificial glass cracks and glass bead cylinders, tomographic modeling of seismic wave attenuation and velocity beneath the western United States, and receiver function studies in New Zealand.

SCEC Participation

SCEC Mentor (2008)