IRIS Consortium Bids Farewell to Marcos Alvarez

After 15 years with the IRIS Consortium and more than 20 years associated with PASSCAL, Marcos Alvarez is headed to New Zealand to pursue an exciting, new opportunity.

Since graduating from Duke University in 1992, Marcos has been an integral part of the PASSCAL community. Prior to the merging of two PASSCAL Instrument Centers into a single facility located at New Mexico Tech, he was Director of Operations at Stanford University's PASSCAL Instrument Center. In 1998, he became the Director of the new IRIS-PASSCAL Instrument Center and, since 2004, has served as the Deputy Program Manager of IRIS PASSCAL, with special responsibilities for management of the USArray Flexible Array.

Over the years, Marcos has contributed to hundreds of seismological field experiments around the world. He has developed best practices guidelines for instrument installation and has trained scores of principal investigators and students in these methods. He has traveled with research teams to remote areas to install seismic stations and is recognized throughout the international seismology community for his deep technical knowledge of instrumentation, his winning smile and his "extra-mile" attitude in the support of researchers and their experiments.

Marcos will begin his new job in the coming weeks with a commercial organization affiliated with the University of Auckland. In his new position, he will lead a group involved with the commercialization of new technologies for exploitation of geothermal resources. Please join us in wishing Marcos and his family all the best as they embark on this new adventure! Adios and Good on ya, Mate!