Dr. Mark Simons is a Professor of Geophysics in the Seismological Laboratory within the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences at Caltech. He received his B.Sc. in Geophysics and Space Physics from UCLA in 1989 and his Ph.D. in Geophysics from MIT in 1996. Dr. Simons joined Caltech as a Postdoctoral Scholar in 1995 and joined the faculty in 1998.
Mark has had a long relationship working with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory which began in 1990 when he was a graduate student working with gravity and SAR imagery data of Venus from the Magellan mission. In collaboration with JPL, Mark served as Caltech's Co-Principal Scientist for the Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis (ARIA) Project, he is the solid earth science co-lead for the NISAR mission science team, and has also been the PI of a series of airborne SAR expeditions studying the glacier dynamics of Icelandic ice caps. Mark served as the JPL Chief Scientist for nearly 7 years (2017-2023) and is currently the Inaugural Director of the Brinson Exploration Hub.
Mark's research broadly encompasses: Processes that deform the solid earth including those associated with the seismic cycle, migration of magma and water in the subsurface, tides, and glacial rebound; Tectonics and the relationship between short and long time scale processes; Glaciology, particularly basal mechanics and ice rheology; Ocean world tectonics and geodynamics, particularly Enceladus; Tools and applications using space geodesy, particularly GNSS, Interferometric SAR and gravity measurements.