University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG) Professor Ginny Catania and Research Professor Laura Wallace have been named fellows of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). This is the organization’s highest honor and recognizes scientists who have made exceptional contributions to Earth and space science through a breakthrough, discovery, or innovation in their field. Former UTIG Distinguished Postdoctoral fellow Srisharan Shreedharan has also been awarded the Jason Morgan Early Career Award, recognizing his outstanding early career contributions in tectonophysics.
“These recognitions are a testament to Ginny, Laura and Srisharan’s own foundational, sustained contributions in their fields of polar sciences and tectonics and tectonophysics respectively, as well as to the Jackson School and UTIG’s research footprint.” said Demian Saffer, director of UTIG, and 2023 AGU fellow.
Catania and Wallace are sixth and seventh Jackson School of Geosciences faculty members or researchers to be named an AGU fellow.
Ginny Catania – 2026 AGU Fellow
Catania, who also serves as a professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the Jackson School, is a glaciologist whose research focuses on the physics that govern ice sheets at ice-ocean and ice-bed boundaries. To date, she has led over a dozen expeditions to Greenland and Antarctica to study these inaccessible parts of the ice sheets, relying on the use of observations from both in-situ and remotely-sensed data.
Currently, Catania is beginning to finalize findings from the recent TERMINUS project, which used novel field observations in a 2024 mission to West Greenland to better understand the processes occurring where glaciers meet the ocean and how those processes influence glacier retreat. This data is providing details about the morphology and the processes occurring at the ice’s edge at a level of detail never seen before. She is also beginning a newly funded project called AutoTerm, that uses artificial intelligence to automatically map the changing positions of Greenland’s marine-terminating glaciers from satellite imagery. Catania says the goal is to create an open, continuously updated record of glacier change that can be used by the broader research community.
“It’s incredibly meaningful to have my work recognized in this way by my scientific community,” she said. “I see this recognition as belonging in part to all of the people who have shared the science and the adventure with me.”
Laura Wallace – 2026 AGU Fellow
Wallace uses geodetic methods to study the deformation of the Earth’s crust at tectonic plate boundaries. She conducts research in various locations, including New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Japan. She has a particular focus on understanding the spectrum of deformation processes that occur throughout the earthquake cycle at subduction zone plate boundaries.
She uses both land-based GNSS methods and seafloor geodetic methods (seafloor pressure, GNSS-Acoustic, IODP downhole observatories) to investigate a range of crustal deformation processes.
She also has a strong interest in using multi-disciplinary observations to gain new insights into the physical processes responsible for active deformation observed geodetically, and has led several large, multidisciplinary experiments. In 2018, Laura was co-leader of IODP Expedition 375 on board the scientific drilling vessel JOIDES Resolution. The expedition investigated the causes of slow-slip events from Hikurangi and collected core samples and geophysical logs from rocks involved in producing slow-slip events at New Zealand’s Hikurangi subduction zone, and installed observatories beneath the seafloor to monitor changes in the crust during the slow-slip cycle. She also led the 2014 HOBITSS (Hikurangi Ocean Bottom Investigation of Tremor and Slow Slip) which was the first experiment to successfully use seafloor pressure sensors to resolve slow slip events on an offshore subduction zone.
Since 2023, Wallace has maintained a joint affiliation with GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, where she has held a Helmholtz Distinguished Professorship for Geodynamics, which is part of the Marine Geodynamics research unit.
Srisharan Shreedharan – Jason Morgan
Early Career Award
Shreedharan was appointed as a Distinguished Postdoctoral fellow from 2021-2022. During his time at UTIG, he worked under the supervision of Luc Lavier, Laura Wallace and Demian Saffer. His research combines laboratory experiments with numerical modeling and machine learning to understand how earthquakes start, propagate, and stop, from the Wasatch fault in Utah to subduction zones offshore New Zealand and Japan.
“I’m grateful for this recognition and understand that it belongs to more people than just me,” said Shreedharan. “I’ve been fortunate to have mentors, collaborators, and students who invested in me and my vision.”
Shreedharan is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Water, Earth, and Environmental Sciences at Utah State University, where he directs the Rock Deformation and Earthquake Mechanics laboratory.