Mark Alvarez Named Director of IRIS/PASSCAL Center

by George Zamora

SOCORRO, N.M., Dec. 4, 1998 -- Mark Germain Alvarez recently was named director of the newest research center on the New Mexico Tech campus--the IRIS/PASSCAL seismological instrumentation center.

Alvarez assumes his new position after having served for six years as managing scientific engineer for another IRIS/PASSCAL Instrument Center, which previously was associated with Stanford University in California.

Earlier this year, the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS) selected New Mexico Tech as the permanent site for its Program for Array Seismic Studies of the Continental Lithosphere (PASSCAL) Instrument Center, which replaced two related earthquake research facilities, the one at Stanford University and one at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University in New York.

"I'll be in charge of the day-to-day operations of the center," says Alvarez, "and that will include, among other things, scheduling of experiments and equipment and interacting with all the different principal investigators who will be using this facility."

IRIS/PASSCAL's projected staff of 13 to 15 employees will largely be involved with developing new seismological instrumentation and associated computer software and hardware; providing logistical and technical support for seismic field experiments; and maintaining a pool of over 1,000 seismographs, which routinely will be lent out to scientists conducting earthquake and other seismological research throughout the world.

In addition to serving as a principal national facility for supporting the collection, processing, and study of earthquake and other seismic data, the IRIS/PASSCAL Instrument Center also is an instrumentation training facility that is international in scope, Alvarez points out.

"For example, I, myself, have participated in field experiments in all of the Earth's continents, except Australia," Alvarez notes, "and, Bruce Beaudoin, our senior staff scientist, just got back from Tibet. . . . When we go out in the field, we're all experts."

Alvarez describes his management style as being more of a facilitator and consensus builder rather than a stickler to hierarchy. "I like to reach consensus," he says.

"We're a busy shop, so we hire the very best people and give them a lot of responsibilities," Alvarez says. "We have a variety of people--computer programmers, technicians, and engineers--and I like for everyone to get to know everyone else's jobs. . . . This practice engenders respect for all employees and keeps people from feeling stagnant at their work."

Most of the research projects with which the IRIS/PASSCAL Instrument Center is involved cover three different levels of seismic research, Alvarez explains, such as broadband networks, sensors which measure very small ground motions and image the core of the Earth; controlled source experiments in which high explosive charges are set off in deep holes, allowing a sort of "CAT scan" of the Earth's deeper surface layers; and high- resolution experiments, which employ smaller-scale explosions and a network of sensors to come up with very accurate images of the Earth's layers nearest the surface.

Prior to starting his employment with IRIS/PASSCAL, Alvarez was the president of SONDI Seismology and Downhole Instrumentation Company.

Alvarez earned his bachelor's degree in geology at the University of California at Santa Barbara and his master of science degree in geophysics with honors at Duke University in Durham, N.C.

He is trilingual--fluent in Spanish, French, and English, and maintains dual-citizenship as a citizen of France and the United States.

In his leisure time, Alvarez is an avid cyclist, and notes that in his "younger years," he even rode for a year-and-a-half in the European professional cycling circuit.

"I never really got it out of my system," he says, "but an unfortunate cycling accident forced me to pursue other things."

Alvarez and his wife, Elizabeth, are parents of a three-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Gigi, and a five-month-old boy, Jean Paul.