The following opportunity is available only to current Stanford Graduate students. Please contact Prof. Howard Zebker if interested, at:
233 Durand
Tel: 723-8067
email: zebker@jakey.stanford.edu
USGS contact and Supervisor:
Dr. John R. Evans
USGS, MS-977
Tel: 415-329-4753
345 Middlefield Rd
FAX: 415-329-5143 or 5163
Menlo Park, CA 94025
e-mail: evans@andreas.wr.usgs.gov
Description: The USGS Western Earthquake Hazards Team is pursuing the TREMOR/SOS Project to develop and demonstrate several new technologies mitigating earthquake hazards. Among these are technologies enabling simple, cheap, robust, yet good-quality seismographs for recording strong earthquake shaking in densely populated regions. We need capable analog and digital engineering support.
Within the next few months, TREMOR/SOS will install a small array of prototype instruments demonstrating existing designs, and both new designs and integration to be supported by the applicant. Refinement and growth of the prototype design pose even more chalellenging problems, particularly in analog design and telecommunications. The project should eventually lead to commercialization and the deployment of hundreds to thousands of instruments in the San Francisco Bay Area and other earthquake-prone regions.
We now have software and seismological support but badly need capable analog and digital engineering assistance for integrating, testing, and refining these instruments and subsystems. The immediate tasks include providing:
an extremely quiet 10 VDC source to drive the accelerometers' Wheatstone bridge quiet sources for the analog conditioning electronics and for trickle-charging batteries integration of these parts with existing $200 DOS and12-bit ADC boards generation of an accurate time signal to drive sampling integration with modems packaging issues Longer term needs may include difficult analog optimization problems, e.g., supermatched transistor preamplifiers, creating or integrating a higher resolution ADC board, test and integration of radio-telemetry solutions, analysis and orrection of noise problems in a high-gain high-resolution instrument, etc.
We have monies for a part time or hourly student appointment beginning immediately (about $15 to $18/hour for a second- to forth-year EE graduate student), with good prospects for additional monies to support this position through at least September, 1997. We will know by February, with release of the President's budget, whether support is likely to be forthcoming after September.
This is an opportunity for real-world experience in instrumentation, including testing, field work, and all aspects of design. It may offer contacts with potential employers. It will save lives. (October 1996)
Last update: October 21, 1996