New Research Leader at Scripps Oceanography

Cathy Constable, professor of geophysics, at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, at UC San Diego, has been selected to serve as Scripps’ Deputy Director for Research, announced Scripps Director Tony Haymet.

Constable, head of the Scripps Earth Section and director of the Cecil H. and Ida M. Green branch of the University of California Systemwide Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics (IGPP) based at Scripps, will serve as Scripps Deputy Director for Research beginning in late September, relinquishing her other administrative roles. In her new position, Constable will oversee the cross-disciplinary research efforts of the Scripps scientific community, focusing on ocean, earth, atmospheric, environmental, and marine biological sciences.

Constable, a Scripps alumna who earned a Ph.D. degree in geophysics in 1987, has spent her entire scientific career at Scripps, spanning more than two decades. Her research focuses on Earth’s magnetic field and the development and application of statistical techniques and inverse theory for geophysical problems.

Specifically, her scientific investigations focus on very long-term variations in the geomagnetic field, on time scales ranging from decades to hundreds of millions of years. She studies how the changing structure of the magnetic field and events such as geomagnetic reversals can inform scientists about processes in Earth’s deep interior.

In addition to her active research pursuits, Constable has served in several administrative roles at Scripps and within the national science community. She is a fellow of the American Geophysical Union and is currently the president of its Geomagnetism and Paleomagnetism Section. She also is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Royal Astronomical Society, which awarded her its Price Medal for Geomagnetism and Aeronomy in 1997.

Constable has been advisory editor of the journal Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors for more than a decade, and reviews and writes research papers for a broad range of scientific journals.