Cynthia Ebinger, a professor in the Tulane University School of Science and Engineering, has won the 2021 George P. Woollard Award from the Geological Society of America. The award is presented annually by the Geophysics and Geodynamics Division of the Geological Society of America. It is named for the late George P. “Doc” Woollard, who was considered an authority on gravitational and seismological aspects of geology.
Dr. Ebinger is the Marshall-Heape Chair in Geology in the department of Earth and environmental sciences at Tulane. She is being honored for her “outstanding contributions to geology through the application of the principles and techniques of geophysics.”
Professor Ebinger is one of the world’s foremost experts in earthquake seismology and active tectonics. Her team of graduate and undergraduate researchers uses seismic and potential fields, signal processing, and geospatial tools to probe fundamental Earth processes. Her focus is on magma fault interactions within the crust and mantle at rifts and hotspots, both active and ancient.
Ebinger said she was honored to receive the award, considering she never intended to be a scientist. “Instead, I followed paths that perplexed and challenged me,” she said. “More often than not, they involved exotic travel, largely because that was the best place to study the research problem, and also for the exposure to new cultures and perspectives.”
Professor Ebinger is a graduate of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. She holds a master’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in the joint program in oceanography from MIT and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.