Baylor – Ben Sadler

Ben Sadler grew up in Dallas, received his B.S. degree from Purdue University in 2018, and is now a 4th year geophysics PhD student at Baylor University, where he is advised by Dr. Jay Pulliam. His work focuses on using teleseismic earthquakes as sources for modeling deep crustal structure in the American Southwest.

Research:

Modeling Lithospheric Structure in the Permian Basin by Waveform-Matching P Receiver Functions and Autocorrelations with Particle Swarm Optimization

Although the shallow lithospheric structure of the Permian Basin has been studied intensively, primarily for oil and gas exploration, the deep lithospheric structure is poorly constrained. This is the case for several reasons. First, the basin possesses a thick sediment cover that hinders traditional survey techniques. Second, the state was monitored only sparsely by sensitive, three-component broadband seismometers until recently. Yet the region’s structure most likely contains artifacts from numerous tectonic events that, if…