Ryan Gold is the Director of the Geologic Hazards Science Center (GHSC) of the USGS. In this position, he oversees GHSC’s efforts focused on earthquake, landslide, and geomagnetic hazards research and monitoring. Gold joined the USGS in 2009 after receiving a doctoral degree in geology from the University of California, Davis and a bachelor’s degree from Whitman College. He joined the USGS as a Mendenhall post-doctoral scholar and was hired permanently in 2011 as a Research Geologist within the Earthquake Geology Project at GHSC.

Gold’s research background focuses on active tectonics and natural hazards, with an emphasis on long-standing problems related to 1) earthquake recurrence and magnitude, 2) fault slip rate, and 3) patterns of surface displacement associated with modern earthquakes by applying a combination of field-based methods (e.g., paleoseismic trenching, neotectonic mapping) and remote sensing (e.g., lidar, satellite imagery, etc.). He has conducted field-based and remotely sensed earthquake studies across the United States, the Caribbean, the Indo-Asia Collision, central Europe, Pakistan, and Australia. He has played a key role in USGS field-based response to significant earthquakes, including the 2010 Haiti, 2013 Balochistan (Pakistan), and 2019 Ridgecrest earthquake sequence. Gold has more than 60 publications in the areas of neotectonics, Quaternary geochronology, seismic imaging, and natural hazards.