Ross Stein studies how earthquakes interact by the transfer of stress. He is the 2012 Natural Hazards Gilbert F. White Distinguished Lecture Award winner of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), and gave a 2012 TEDx talk, ‘Defeating Earthquakes.’ He received a Sc.B. from Brown University magna cum laude and with honors, and a Ph.D. from Stanford University. He is a Fellow of the AGU and the Geological Society of America, was Editor of the Journal of Geophysical Research during 1986-1989, and chaired AGU’s Board of Journal Editors in 2004-2006. In 2003, the Science Citation Index reported that Stein was the second most-cited author in earthquake science during the preceding decade; he was the tenth most cited during 1900-2010. He is a cofounder of the Global Earthquake Model, a public-private partnership building a seismic risk model for the world, and chairs GEM’s Scientific Board.
Stein has received the Eugene M. Shoemaker Distinguished Achievement Award of the USGS, the Excellence in Outreach Award of the Southern California Earthquake Center, and the Outstanding Contributions and Cooperation in Geoscience Award from NOAA. He was keynote speaker at the Smithsonian Institution for the Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching, and has given AGU’s Francis Birch Lecture and its Frontiers of Geophysics Lecture. Ross has appeared in many documentary films, including the Emmy-nominated documentary, ‘Killer Quake’ (NOVA, 1995), the four-part ‘Great Quakes’ series (Discovery, 1997-2001), and the multiple award-winning 2004 National Geographic IMAX movie ‘Forces of Nature,’ which he helped to write.