Dr. Emily Roland, emily.roland@wwu.edu.

Emily is an Associate Professor in the Geology Department at Western Washington University.  She’s also a core faculty member of the Marine and Coastal Sciences Program at WWU. She grew up in southern Washington State, received a BSc from the Colorado School of Mines in Geophysical Engineering, and a PhD from the MIT/WHOI Joint Program in Marine Seismology.  She was a Mendenhall Postdoctoral Fellow at the USGS – Alaska Science Center and an Assistant Professor in the School of Oceanography at University of Washington before coming to Western in 2020. Emily’s research is broadly focused on understanding how the structure of the earth, from the fine scale structure at the seafloor  to the large-scale structure of the deep crust, influences natural hazards like earthquakes, tsunamis and landslides.  Emily’s CV (updated periodically)

Past Lab Members

Katie Kennedy – Past graduate student (WWU) Katie posed an interesting question in her graduate research at WWU – Is the abundant volcanism in Southeast Alaska linked to tranform faulting. She also produced the first high-resolution velocity model of the North American Cordillera on the far western edge – adjacent to the Queen Charlotte Fault. Read more about it in her great thesis here: Crustal architecture and earthquake rupture dynamics along the Queen Charlotte Fault: Insights from marine seismic imaging As of Fall, 2025, Katie is working for the Washington State Geological Survey in Port Angeles.

Andrew Gase – Past Postdoc We had the pleasure of hosting Andrew as an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow in 2022-2024. Andrew worked on the Queen Charlotte fault broadband study as a part of the TOQUES collaborator team. He has continued this work as an Assistant Professor at Boise State. Check out his SRL article focused on an initial earthquake catalog using machine learning tools (and general data details from TOQUES. TOQUES: An Ocean‐Bottom Seismometer Dataset on the Central Queen Charlotte Fault, Southeast Alaska Also find Andrew at Boise State

Declan Tracy – WWU MACS Undergraduate Declan worked with seafloor imagery from the 4CastGofar experiment. After graduating, Declan was accepted to a graduate program focused on Marine Resources Management in Cork Ireland. Check out his AGU Abstract from 2022

Jacob Tomer – WWU MACS Undergraduate Jacob focused on an array of data sets while working as an undergrad. researcher at WWU. His primary focuse was on watercolumn imaging of methane seeps along the Queen Charlotte margin. Jacob started a PhD program at the University of Rhode Island after graduating. Check out his AGU Abstract from 2022

Emma Martin – WWU MACS Undergraduate While an undergraduate at WWU, Emma conducted streamer tomography using data she helped to collect from the Transform Obliquity along the Queen Charlotte and Earthquake Study (TOQUES) to image the central Queen Charlotte Fault. Emma presented this work at SSA and AGU – and you can read here Honor’s Thesis here. After graduating, Emma started a PhD program at UT Austin.

Paige Koenig – Past graduate student (WWU) Paige sailed on the 2021 4CastGofar cruise to the south Pacific and used meter-scale multibeam bathymetry data from AUV Sentry to characterize fault morphology and link it to earthquake rupture processes at East Pacific Rise Transform Faults. Check out Paige’s great thesis here: High Resolution Seafloor Structure of the Gofar Oceanic Transform Fault As of Fall, 2025, Paige is a geophysical tech with the USGS in Denver.

Lazaro Garza – Past graduate student (WWU) – Central Queen Charlotte Fault Crustal Architecture Laz sailed on the 2021 Transform Obliquity along the Queen Charlotte and Earthquake Study seismic aquisition cruise and focused on arrival time tomography for his Master’s thesis. Check out his awesome thesis here: Velocity structure of the Queen Charlotte Fault across the 2013 Mw 7.5 Craig earthquake regionAs of Fall, 2025, Laz is a geophysicist at Jacobs Geophysical Inc.

Kevin Pszczola – Past graduate student (WWU) – Alaska Forearc Seismicity Kevin used data from the AACSE to explore earthquake clusters offshore the Alaska subduction Zone, within the forearc.

Emma Myers – Past graduate student (UW) – Chilean Subduction and the Iquique Ridge Check out Emma’s paper on structure of the Chile subduction zone: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2021JB023169 Emma is currently serving as an Academic Advisor at College of Southern Nevada

Ginevra Moore – Past graduate student (UW) – Seattle Fault from marine seismic imaging Ginevra published this great article in BSSA focused on the Seattle Fault: https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/ssa/bssa/article/doi/10.1785/0120220013/616271/High-Resolution-Marine-Seismic-Imaging-of-the Ginevra is currently a staff geophysicists at Natural Systems Design

Chris Williams – University of Washington Graduate During his time as a UW undergraduate student researcher, Chris explored  the critical geologic environments of the Cascadia Subduction Zone forearc and Elwha Delta using acoustic technologies like multibeam bathymetry and seismic reflection.Chris is likely galavanting somewhere in Washington DC – likley working with Fancy Geospatial data.