Rock Star: Earthquake Geologist Kim Blisniuk

Associate Professor of Geology Kim Blisniuk received the SJSU Research Foundation’s 2019 Early Career Investigator Award. The award recognizes tenure-track faculty members who have excelled in areas of research, scholarship and creative activity at an early or beginning point in their careers.

Kim Blisniuk’s research investigates and quantifies how landscapes evolve through time due to earthquakes and climate change. She is particularly interested in earthquakes that are preserved in the landscape along active faults because the rate at which a fault moves is proportional to the fault’s seismic hazard potential. The societal impact of her research is high because data she collects will help refine earthquake hazard models that forecast the potential of future earthquakes and their recurrence in California.

In 2019 Blisniuk received the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award, the organization’s most prestigious award in support of early-career faculty. This added to her remarkable track record of funded research grants and awards from organizations such as the U.S. Department of the Interior’s National Earthquake Hazard Reduction Program and the Southern California Earthquake Center. She has made presentations at the American Geophysical Union, the U.S. Geological Survey, Boston University, the California Institute of Technology, UCLA and Université Grenoble. Her publication record is equally impressive. In addition, she has been interviewed as a subject matter expert by Earth and Space Science News, National Geographic Magazine, the New York Times and major television networks.