iii
Acknowledgements
There are no proper words to convey my deep gratitude and respect for my thesis
and research advisor, Professor Mike Gurnis. He has inspired me to become an
independent researcher and helped me realize the power of critical reasoning. He also
demonstrated what a brilliant and hard-working scientist can accomplish.
My sincere thanks must also go to the members of my thesis advisory and exam
committee: Professors Jean-Philippe Avouac, Mark Simons, and Joann Stock, Jeroen
Tromp, and Brian Wernicke. They generously gave their time to offer me valuable
comments toward improving my work. In particular, Prof. Mark Simons showed
me the great power and potential of applying the Interferometric SAR technique to
geophysical problems. Also, Prof. Joann Stock provided me constructive criticism
which helped me develop a broader perspective to my thesis.
I am most grateful to the collaborators for lending me their expertise and intuition
to my scientific and technical problems: Dr. Luc Lavier; Dr. Pururav Thoutireddy
and other computational scientists at Center for Advanced Computational Research
at Caltech; Steve Quenette, Pat Sunter, Luke Hodkinson, Bill Applebe and other
software engineers at Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing in Australia.
There is no way to express how much it meant to me to have been a member
of Seismological Laboratory. These brilliant friends and colleagues inspired me over
the many years: Eh Tan, Lijun Liu, Chad Hall, Laetitia LePhouriet, Vlad Manea,
Ravi Kanda, Yoshi Kaneko, Nathan Downey, Frederic Herman, Eric Hetland, Yaru
Hsu, Laura Alisic, Lydia DiCaprio, Michelle Stempel, Dan Bower, and all the other
current and former Seismolab grad students and visitors that I know.
The administrative staffs in the GPS division and Seismolab are memorable not
