Kuo-Fong Ma (, 1963 ) is a Taiwanese seismologist. She is primarily known for research conducted on the Chelungpu Fault, the cause of one of the most devastating earthquakes in Taiwan, the 1999 Jiji earthquake.

Career

Ma was born in 1963 at

Su'ao Su'ao Township (), alternately romanized as Su-ao, is located in southern Yilan County, Taiwan, is an urban township that is famous for its seafood restaurants and cold springs. It is a terminus of National Highway No. 5, the Su'ao-Hualien ...

, Taiwan. She graduated from

National Central University National Central University (NCU, ; Pha̍k-fa-sṳ: ''Kwet-li̍p Chung-yong Thài-ho̍k'', Wade–Giles: ''Kuo2 Li4 Chung Yang Ta4 Hsüeh2'' or ''中大'', ''Chung-ta'') is a public research university with long-standing traditions based in Taiwa ...

in 1985 and received her master's degree in 1987 from the Institute of Oceanography at

National Taiwan University National Taiwan University (NTU; ) is a public research university in Taipei, Taiwan. The university was founded in 1928 during Japanese rule as the seventh of the Imperial Universities. It was named Taihoku Imperial University and served d ...

. In 1993, she earned a PhD degree from the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences at

Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...

. She is currently the Chief Scientist of the Taiwan Earthquake Research Center, a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Institute of Earth Sciences,

Academia Sinica Academia Sinica (AS, la, 1=Academia Sinica, 3=Chinese Academy; ), headquartered in Nangang, Taipei, is the national academy of Taiwan. Founded in Nanking, the academy supports research activities in a wide variety of disciplines, ranging from ...

, a professor in the Earth Sciences Department of

, and the founder and Director of the Earthquake- Disaster & Risk Evaluation and Risk Management (E-DREaM) Center. She is also a member of the

Global Earthquake Model The Global Earthquake Model (GEM) is a public–private partnership initiated in 2006 by the Global Science Forum of the OECD to develop global, open-source software, open-source risk assessment software and tools. With committed backing from acad ...

. Ma was one of the Ten Outstanding Young Women of Republic of China of the year 2000 and received the Academic Award of Ministry of Education in 2007. In 2011, she was awarded a Taiwan Outstanding Women in Science (TOWIS) prize and the annual science prize from the

Chien-Shiung Wu ) , spouse = , residence = , nationality = ChineseAmerican , field = Physics , work_institutions = Institute of Physics, Academia SinicaUniversity of California at BerkeleySmith CollegePrinceton UniversityColumbia UniversityZhejiang Unive ...

Education Foundation. She received a Ministry of Education National Chair Professorship in 2013. In 2019, she was elected as a fellow of the

American Geophysical Union The American Geophysical Union (AGU) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization of Earth, atmospheric, ocean, hydrologic, space, and planetary scientists and enthusiasts that according to their website includes 130,000 people (not members). AGU's act ...

Research

Ma led the "Taiwan Chelungpu Fault Drilling Project," which explored the causes of the 1999 Jiji earthquake that occurred in central Taiwan on September 21, 1999. Her team was the first to measure the actual thickness of earthquake slip zones, a key parameter in understanding earthquake energy release. Her research implied that the causes of the 921 earthquake is cyclical in nature, predicting a similar one in 400 years. Analyses of the earthquake also led to the first characterization of earthquakes caused by the movement of underground water. The team defined this unusual type of earthquake as an "isotropic event," an earthquake-like event caused by natural hydraulic fracturing. This finding might have implications for fracking operations. Ma established a Taiwan Earthquake Committee to chart earthquake models of Taiwan (the Taiwan Earthquake Model project). In 2018, she created the Earthquake Disaster & Risk Evaluation and Management Center (E-DREaM), an agency that brings together experts and scholars in the disaster chains to analyze the risk factors of events such as earthquakes, tsunami, landslides, soil liquefaction, and extreme weather systems.

Key publications

* Ma, K. F., Mori, J., Lee, S. J., & Yu, S. B. (2001). Spatial and temporal distribution of slip for the 1999 Chi-Chi, Taiwan, earthquake. Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, 91(5), 1069–1087. * Ma, K. F., Tanaka, H., Song, S. R., Wang, C. Y., Hung, J. H., Tsai, Y. B., ... & Wu, H. Y. (2006). Slip zone and energetics of a large earthquake from the Taiwan Chelungpu-fault Drilling Project. Nature, 444(7118), 473–476. * Ma, K. F., Lin, Y. Y., Lee, S. J., Mori, J., & Brodsky, E. E. (2012). Isotropic events observed with a borehole array in the Chelungpu fault zone, Taiwan. Science, 337(6093), 459–463.

References

Notes

External links

Personal website
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Ma, Kuo-Fong 1963 births Living people Seismologists Taiwanese scientists Members of Academia Sinica Taiwanese women scientists