#WhereScienceLives: Engineer Carlos Becerril
Exploring life “under the sea” has long captivated the public. Meet an Academy member working to advance our understanding of the deep by recording the world along the ocean floor.
Published September 25, 2017
By Attila Szász
Academy Contributor

In the United States, there are only three institutional groups who are part of the Ocean Bottom Seismograph Instrument Pool (OBSIP), an instrument facility that provides ocean bottom seismometers to support research and further understanding of marine geology, seismology, and geodynamics. One of these groups, the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) at Columbia University, is based in Palisades, New York- less than 25 miles up the Hudson River from the Academy’s home. We recently heard from Academy member Carlos Becerril, Research Engineer at LDEO in the Division of Seismology, Geology and Tectonophysics‘ Ocean-Bottom Seismology lab, about the work he does to measure the world beneath the deep.
Carlos told us, “We [at the Ocean-Bottom Seisomology Lab] are a team of scientists and engineers that develop and operate cutting-edge instrumentation utilized in seismic ‘hot-spots’ located under the world’s oceans, sometimes as deep as three miles under water. In broad terms, the data we record aims to explain the mechanics of how the Earth is put together, at mapping the sub-seafloor, highlighting hidden faults and other earthquake hazards.”
Check out photos of him at work below:




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