Chris Marone has been selected to receive the European Geosciences Union’s 2019 Louis Néel Medal. The medal is awarded to individuals in recognition of outstanding achievements in rock magnetism, rock physics and geomaterials.

Marone, a professor of geosciences in Penn State’s College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, was selected for his “seminal contributions to the understanding of fault mechanics and earthquake generating processes, and for innovation in experimental techniques and apparatus development.” He was also recognized for his role in relating laboratory research to earthquake seismology, and in integrating fault mechanics into earthquake physics as a whole.

“I feel very lucky to have worked with excellent students and colleagues,” Marone said. “We’ve worked on difficult problems that involve many variables and tightly coupled interactions between distinct factors. We’ve been fortunate to have used an experimental approach based on reproducible science, which has allowed us to unravel some of the tricky coupling between parameters.”

Marone, considered an expert on earthquake processes, earned his undergraduate degree in geology from Binghamton University, and master’s and doctoral degrees in geophysics from Columbia University. He has been a member of the Penn State faculty since 2001 and currently serves as the associate director of the Penn State’s Institute for Natural Gas Research (INGAR). He is also a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union.

Marone will receive the award at the 2019 EGU General Assembly in April in Vienna, Austria. The Louis Néel Medal is named after Louis Eugéne Felix Néel, who shared the 1970 Nobel Prize in Physics for his fundamental research and discoveries concerning antiferromagnetism.