Prof Tim Wright

Biography

Tim Wright has been at Leeds since 2006, initially as a Royal Society University Research Fellow and (since 2012) as Professor of Satellite Geodesy. His work has been at the forefront of developing the use of satellite radar interferometry (InSAR) for measuring tectonic and volcanic deformation. Major achievements include the first demonstration that inter-seismic strain can be measured using InSAR, in this case for the North Anatolian Fault; the investigation of a series of major earthquakes using geodesy, seismology and geomorphology, including Bam (Iran, 2003), Denali (Alaska, 2002), and Izmit (Turkey, 1999); the mapping and modelling of precursory inflation at a volcanic centre (Dabbahu, Ethiopia), and the subsequent discovery of a major rifting episode in Afar, Ethiopia. He has published more than 50 articles in major international journals, and his work is highly cited. He led the NERC-funded Afar Rift Consortium, a £3M project that is using a wide range of geophysical, geochemical and geologic techniques to investigate how the crust grows at divergent plate boundaries, and co-leads LICS, a NERC large grant to "Look Inside the Continents from Space". In 2006, he was awarded the William Smith Fund of the Geological Society, and a Philip Leverhulme Prize, in 2014 he received the AGU Geodesy Section Award, and in 2015 he was the British Geophysical Association's Bullerwell lecturer and received the Rosenstiel Award from the University of Miami. He is director of the NERC Centre for the Observation and Modelling of Earthquakes, Volcanoes and Tectonics (COMET), and coordinates the geodynamics/tectonics research group at Leeds. Follow me on twitter: @timwright_leeds ResearcherID: http://www.researcherid.com/rid/A-5892-2011 Google Scholar: http://bit.ly/GStimw

Research Interest

My research interests are in fluid processes in the Earth's crust, and span a wide range of topics, including aspects of ore formation, diagenesis and prograde and retrograde metamorphism, taking place at all levels in the crust. I am particularly interested in chemical mass transfer by fluids and in the cycle of interactions between fluid flow, temperature, mineralogical reactions and the rheology and permeability of the crust. The techniques that my group has employed in recent years include field and petrographic observations, rock and mineral analysis, fluid inclusion studies (including multi-element chemical analysis), experimental studies and geochemical modelling of fluid rock interaction. I am interested both in exploiting results from the study of active processes today for the improved understanding of ancient flow regimes, and in understanding how human activity in the subsurface may modify natural processes in the future.