Biography

Eric Calais is Professor of Geosciences at the Ecole normale supérieure in Paris, France, member of the French National Academy of Sciences, and senior fellow of the Institut Universitaire de France. He graduated from the Ecole Normale Supérieure (St Cloud, France), where he studied Earth Sciences and received the “agrégation” diploma in 1987. He received a MS at the University of Bretagne Occidentale (Brest, France) in 1988 and a PhD at the University of Nice (France) in 1991. He was postdoctoral researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography (U.C. San Diego) until 1995, research scientist at the CNRS (Nice, France) until 2001, then became professor of geophysics at Purdue University (USA) where he remained until 2012. E. Calais was nominated University Faculty Scholar at Purdue University in 2005. He received the Jacob-Fallot-Jérémine award from the French Academy of Sciences in 2008 and the Frank Press award from the Seismological Society of America in 2012.

E. Calais' research interests concern the kinematics and dynamics of active tectonic processes. His main tools are space geodesy, in particular the Global Positioning System (GPS), and mechanical modeling of lithospheric deformation. He initiated and led many field experiments worldwide — incl. Caribbean, central Asia, east Africa — to study active deformation processes at spatial and temporal scales ranging from individual earthquakes or volcanic events to the deformation of plate margins or the motion of tectonic plates. He also uses GPS as an atmospheric remote sensing tool for tropospheric water vapor with applications to meteorology and climate. He pioneered the use of GPS to detect ionospheric perturbations triggered by earthquakes, volcanoes, and man-made explosions.

E. Calais co-authored 170 publications in top-tier peer-reviewed journals (h-index=51, 7500 citations as of October 2019, ISI WoS or Scopus), has given over 60 invited lectures and seminars, and contributed to more than 200 presentations at national and international meetings. He has supervised 21 graduate students and teaches geodesy and geophysics at the undergraduate and graduate level.

E. Calais was Head of the Geosciences department at Ecole normale supérieure and Director of the "Yves Rocard Research Laboratory" (Joint research venture partnering ENS Paris, the CNRS, and the French Nuclear Energy Commission) from 2013 to 2018. He was Chief Editor for Geophysical Research Letters from 2009 to 2014. He chaired the UNAVCO Board of Directors (2005-2008), the Scientific Council of the European Institute for Marine Studies at the Univ. of Brest, France (2008-2012), the Scientific Advisory board of Institute for Earth Science in Grenoble, France (2016-2019. E. Calais was elected on the Board of Directors of the Seismological Society of America in 2011. He has been serving on many national and international committees and review panels. He has been convener, organizer, or program committee member for more than 20 international scientific meetings.

E. Calais has served as expert-consultant in seismic hazard and risk reduction for the World Bank, the International Development Bank, the United Nations Development Program, and the European Union. He co-chaired the United Nations Haiti Earthquake Task Force after the devastating January 2010 earthquake. He served as scientific advisor to the United Nations in Haiti from 2010 to 2012, where he advocated and applied disaster risk reduction practices in the country's reconstruction.

© 2020