Muawia Barazangi papers

Muawia Barazangi was born and raised in Damascus, Syria. He graduated and obtained his BS degree in 1965 from Damascus University, majoring in physics and geology. Subsequently, he was granted a research assistantship from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, where he obtained a Master degree in applied geophysics in 1967. For his Ph.D. he moved to Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in New York City, and obtained his Ph.D. degree in 1971 majoring in seismology. During his stay at Lamont he was involved and participated in numerous field projects, collecting seismological data, including the western USA and the southwest Pacific (Tonga, Fiji, and Vanuatu). When his Ph.D. advisor at Columbia, the late Professor Jack Oliver, moved to Cornell University in 1971, Muawia joined him as a research scientist and subsequently became a full professor. He taught in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and served as the Associate Director of the Institute for the Study of the Continents (INSTOC). He also served in 1978-1980 as an associate professor and chairman of the Department of Geophysics at the Faculty of Earth Sciences, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. In 2009 he retired and became a professor emeritus. The focus of Barazangi's research at Cornell was on seismotectonics at regional and global scale, including seismicity of the earth, geometry and structure of subducted plates at converging plate boundaries, intraplate structure and tectonic activities, active continental collisions zones, historical earthquakes, paleoseismology and trenching of active faults, and evaluation and assessment of earthquake hazard. He also initiated and participated in the development of a comprehensive Geographic Information System (GIS) for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). In 2025 the Muawia Barazangi Scholarly Fund fund was established to support research staff in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. More information can be found at: http://atlas.geo.cornell.edu.