COOS BAY, OR. - The 2011-2012 geology lecture series kicks off with a talk by Dr. M. Beatrice Magnani on “The New Madrid Earthquakes Two Hundred Years Later: What Have We Learned About Earthquakes at the Center of Tectonic Plates?” This free lecture takes place Friday, October 21st at 7:00 pm in the Hales Center for the Performing Arts on the SWOCC campus. Dr. Magnani has been a faculty member at the Center for Earthquake Research and Information at the University of Memphis since 2006. She earned her MS & Ph.D. at Universita' degli Studi di Perugia, followed by postdoctoral work at Rice University. After studying plate boundaries all over the world, Dr. Magnani recently had a major discovery of a previously unknown fault line beneath the Mississippi River. She has been featured in the PBS documentary Earthquakes in the Midwest and on their Nova ScienceNOW Web site as an “Ask the Expert.” She comes to Coos Bay as a distinguished lecturer for The Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS) and the Seismological Society of America (SSA). Continuing sponsors of the lecture series include Oregon Resources Corporation, the SWOCC Foundation and the College.
