Department of Earth, Environmental & Planetary Sciences

Karen M. Fischer is a seismologist who studies the structure and dynamics of Earth's interior. Her work focuses on understanding the lithosphere and asthenosphere, how these layers are created, deform and evolve over time, and their roles in plate tectonics and mantle convection.  She and her group analyze and model large datasets of seismic waveform data to measure the structure of the crust and mantle, including the signatures of present-day and ancient plate boundaries, mantle flow, and mantle melting processes. This work involves field-based seismometer experiments and the development of new methods to resolve Earth structure with seismic waves.  Karen is a recipient of the Inge Lehmann Medal (American Geophysical Union), the Harry Fielding Reid Medal (Seismological Society of America) and the W. S. Jardetzky Medal (Columbia University).  She is an American Geophysical Union Fellow and Beno Gutenberg Lecturer.  At Brown her work has been recognized with the Royce Family Professorship in Teaching Excellence, the Karen T. Romer Award for Undergraduate Advising and Mentoring, and the Meenakshi Narain Excellence in Research Mentoring Award.  She earned her B.S. from Yale University (1983) and her Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1989), and she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University.