Mary Lou Zoback

Board Member

Mary Lou Zoback is currently Vice President, Earthquake Risk Applications with Risk Management Solutions in Newark, CA. RMS is the world's leading catastrophe modeling firm. Her responsibilities at RMS include leading initiatives on the significance of risk quantification for expanding the societal role of earthquake insurance, disaster management, and risk reduction activities worldwide. She is also working to build consensus among experts to develop high-quality earthquake source and earthquake risk models for new regions of the world.

She previously served as Chief Scientist of the USGS Earthquake Hazards team in Menlo Park, CA and also as Regional Coordinator for the Northern California Earthquake Hazards Program. From 2003-2006 she was Chair of the Steering Committee for the 1906 Earthquake Centennial Alliance, a non-profit promoting public outreach on seismic safety and coordinating more than 280 groups and organizations that put on events to commemorate the 1906 earthquake. Zoback joined the USGS in 1978 after receiving her BS, MS and Ph.D. in geophysics from Stanford University. She has served on numerous national committees and panels on topics ranging from defining the next generation of Earth observations from space, storage of high-level radioactive waste, facilitating interdisciplinary research, and science education. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a past-President of the Geological Society of America. She is the recipient of the 2007 GSA Day Medal, 2007 GSA Public Service Award, the "Leadership, Innovation, and Outstanding Accomplishments in Earthquake Risk Reduction" Award from the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (2006), and the AGU Macelwane Award for Young Scientists (1987).