VM: Hello everyone, my name is Viridis Miranda. I’m a SciComm intern at EarthScope Consortium, and I’ll be interviewing a PhD student from the University of Washington–Erfan Horeh. I’ll also be interviewing what he does at EarthScope and what he finds fascinating. Hi Erfan, how are you today?

EH: Hi, thank you! Nice to meet you. I’m so interested to be here and having the interview with you.

VM: Awesome, I’m so excited to interview you as well. So, Erfan, could you tell us a little bit about your PhD program and what you do there?

EH: Yes, of course. I’m a second year PhD student at the University of Washington, and I’m working in the field of underwater acoustics. In my PhD research, I’m using a new technology called DAS, Distributed Acoustic Sensing. In this technology, we use the optic fiber cables as an array of the sensor. We use the interrogator to send pulses through the fiber optic cables and receive the backscatter signals. And it can work as an array of the sensors and get lots of data from any environment. For example, if you use that in an underwater area, we can get data from that place or we can use it onshore like the things that EarthScope does, and we can get data from there.

VM: Amazing. So let me get this straight–your project is mostly doing seismology, but currently on oceanography, correct? 

EH: The point is that in my PhD studies, I’m doing mostly underwater acoustics, not seismology. But the point is that I’m working with DAS, and the DAS itself works as a sensor, as a tool, and we can use it in different applications and fields. And in my PhD project, I used that as a tool in the underwater acoustics and in EarthScope, now I’m using it as a tool in the seismology in EarthScope–in the earthquake field. 

VM: Awesome. My next question would be how did you find out about the EarthScope internship and how did you tie it to your PhD program–since you’re doing acoustics it sounds like the EarthScope internship that you’re doing fits in perfectly.

EH: The first point is that I’m so interested in the technology that I”m working on , the DAS, and I’m searching for different opportunities which help me to work in this field and in this technology. And my advisor introduced this opportunity to work as an intern in this company. And the technology is the same technology that I used in my PhD program. So I applied for that and now I’m so happy that I was accepted for this internship, and now working as an intern in this project.

VM: That’s super awesome. And what do you find most interesting about this program within EarthScope?

EH: The similarity between my PhD project and the project that I have here is the first thing. But the point is that the differences in the fields, for example, in my PhD, as I mentioned, I work in the underwater acoustics and the source of happenings are so different from the, for example, earthquakes or the seismology things, and the other things related to geophysics. Both similarities and differences between my PhD project and here are so interesting for me. And also another point is that in EarthScope–EarthScope has lots of tools and also instruments. We can work with them in person and try to adjust them for our purposes. It’s so interesting to work with this technology in person in a real world condition.

VM: That’s awesome. It’s like you fit your personal goals and professional goals into the internship and also have this professional skill set that you’re acquiring. Aside from that, what else do you find the applicability towards your program? Are you learning new programming skills? Are you learning how the instrument, other features of the instruments that you use within your PhD program?

EH: Mhm. So the point is that, in my PhD program, in my academic research, I mostly do the signal processing, working with the data, and most things were done by using the computer. In the EarthScope internship, it’s the same sometimes, but the point is that we have access to lots of instruments and we can work with them in person, you know, we can use, we can go and see the instruments. The good point is that EarthScope arranged the travel for me to go to Socorro, New Mexico, and see the instruments and try to deploy them, do some experiments and see the results in the dataset that we collected. It’s so interesting of a skill to have not just a big picture of the dataset or just coding or these kind of things. Both has a skill to work with the tool itself, and try to deploy them and get the dataset and adjust it for your purpose. It’s so nice that I can get these skills from the EarthScope. 

VM: Oh, that’s amazing. What do you find most interesting about doing field work? I love doing field work myself, by the way. Even though I work at the Puerto Rico Seismic Network and most of our work is like very computer-based, very programming, but anytime that I get to go out in the field, I take it. 

EH: Yes, me too. And the point is that in my PhD, we had some field work for deploying some tools, in the–for example Whidbey Island near Seattle or deploying some tools in the ocean by using some boats. But this one is a little different from that one because we have the cables and instruments onshore in the middle of the Socorro, and we can also do some experiments ourselves. In the fieldwork in the ocean we usually try to do passive acoustics. It means that we just listen. Also here is a kind of passive acoustics. We are listening to the data. But the point is that we do some experiments. For example, do some explosions and try to find out how we can see that explosions in our datasets. It’s a nice difference between the previous fieldwork and the fieldwork in the EarthScope. 

VM: Oh that’s awesome. And what would you say is the most difficult part, the pre-processing part of the data, during how you acquire the data, or the post-processing? Which process do you find most difficult? 

EH: I think all of that has a kind of difficulty at the beginning. For example, pre-processing is a little hard because we use different interrogators for sending pulses and getting backscattered signals and each interrogator has its metadata and finding a way to analyze that metadata and convert it to raw data that we can use it in our post-processing is a little difficult but after that, another point is that usually DAS gives us big data, so much terabytes of the data and for analyzing these kind of huge data we need HPC (High Performance Computers), however at this point, EarthScope doesn’t have a HPC for DAS projects and we should do that with the normal computers, so we should use lots of data processing and signal processing methods to work with so much big data. And also it makes it a little difficult and we should be a little creative to find ways in coding or managing the data. 

VM: Well, that’s amazing. I really love like hard crunchy coding. I’m a hard coder but in the sense that I use more cloud notebooks. I don’t program terminals. I’m still a beginner myself, but it’s really amazing that you’re really into it and programming is taking such a great advantage during all graduate studies as well. Which type of programming do you use for your research? 

EH: At this point I do the analysis mostly with Python. But during my project in my academic–in in the university also I used the Python and I did that in the HPC that the university provided for us. And at that point I need to work with the terminal and create an array of the jobs and run them simultaneously together to analyze the data sets and lots of different things that we did over there. But here at EarthScope I mostly use Python for analyzing the data sets. 

VM: That’s amazing. And Python is getting like a great like upgrade, like, for example, people back in the day used to use like Fortran. I know that some people use C++ or MatLab. MatLab is more used like for engineers. Some geoscientists also, they use that program, but I like Python as well. 

EH: For working with the datasets for, with the data, analyzing signal processing. I think Python is one of the best tools. 

VM: I most agree. Aside from all the cool and amazing stuff you do at EarthScope and as a grad student, what other things do you do amongst your free time? What hobbies do you have? 

EH: As a hobby, I can say that I’m at this time I’m living in Seattle, and as you know Seattle is so green, so much green, and usually the temperature is moderate, it’s mild, it’s not too cold, too warm, and it’s a great place for hiking or biking, and most of the times, if I have free time in the weekends, I usually go hiking or do biking in Seattle itself, and also sometimes swimming nearby the Seattle area and also in the lakes in in the Washington State area. Yeah, I like swimming in the the lakes. 

VM: That’s awesome. I love swimming myself. Well, I live in Puerto Rico and we have the beach, it’s like very accessible from home. It’s like around 30 minutes. So, it’s really nice for a quick swim. So, which type of place do you recommend for people visiting in the Seattle area for a quick swim? 

EH: The point is that the beach in the Seattle area is a little cold, and the water is so cold because it’s a little in the high latitude, but the lakes, for example the Lake Washington in the Seattle itself, it’s a big lake it’s a good place for swimming and the water at that place is so nice and the temperature is good for swimming, but also there are some other lakes that you should hike first to reach out to. For example the Lake 22, it’s a nice place for swimming, but it’s a little cold, but I like that so much. 

VM: Awesome, that’s pretty cool. Also, another question that I have is what advice do you have for undergraduates or for aspiring high school students who do want to study one day in your field? Like if you could go back in time and see your 17-year- old self, what advice would you give to that person or to anyone you know aspiring to your career? 

EH: The first point is that if I want to give advice to the undergrad students, it is to have a kind of big picture of different fields. Know the different fields of works and have an idea about all of them. Then select the field that you like so much. And if I want to be more advanced, I can say that knowing especially in my field, knowing the skills of coding and signal processing helps you so much in doing your research better, and also simultaneously you should get the back science of your work, and also it’s so important but it can be done when you start your graduate studies, but prior to that, knowing the coding and data analyzing and these kind of skills, that’s needed in most of fields of works, to help you to improve yourself so much better. 

VM: That’s awesome. It’s very important, like when you get to a type of field, to have a big picture of what are the advantages of studying that field, and also what truly what you like studying. I agree that whatever you put your mind to, you have to really feel passionate about it and I think that’s that’s how the success happens. Well, thank you so much, Erfan. 

EH: Of course. 

VM: I wish you the best at this EarthScope Consortium Internship. Thank you so much and thank you for your interview.