Nori Nakata

Biography

Nori Nakata, PhD, is a Research Affiliate and Research Mentor at ICSI. He is also a Principal Research Scientist at MIT and Staff Scientist in the Energy Geosciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. 

Dr. Nakata’s research interests include crustal/global seismology, exploration geophysics, volcanism, civil engineering, wave phenomena, signal processing and artificial intelligence, and earthquakes and microseismicity. The overall aim of his research is to gain a better understanding of natural and manmade structures by analyzing seismic waves. His work has focused on predicting ground motion caused by large earthquakes, understanding earthquake source physics, discerning the history of the Earth, anticipating volcanic eruptions, and imaging the distribution of natural resources (e.g., petroleum, mines, geothermal). He uses manmade seismic sources, earthquakes, microseismic, and natural and anthropogenic background noise to extract information about the internal dynamics of the Earth.

Previously, Dr. Nakata was an assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma (2016-2018) and a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University (2013-2016). He received his PhD in geophysics from the Colorado School of Mines and his Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees in engineering from Kyoto University. 

Publications

Selected Honors & Awards

• Early Career Scientist Award, International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics, 2023 
• Young Scientist Award, Seismological Society of Japan, 2017

Selected Leadership Activities

• Committee for membership in the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (vice president since 2024)
• Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing
• Associate Editor, Journal of Geophysical Research
• Associate Editor, Journal of Applied Geophysics (2016-2018)

ICSI Activity