He is an ‘experimental geophysicist’ with research interests in materials science, tribology, rock mechanics, glaciology and earthquake mechanics. A particular focus of Dr. Goldsby’s research is understanding deformation mechanisms in planetary materials and how they control large-scale geophysical phenomena, such as the nucleation of earthquakes and the motion of the Earth’s great ice sheets. Dr. Goldsby completed his PhD in Geophysics at the University of Minnesota in 1997, and was an Associate Professor (Research) at Brown University until 2014. He is a long-time member of the American Geophysical Union and the Southern California Earthquake Center, and Facilities Chair of the new rock mechanics consortium DEFORM (Deformation Experimentalists at the Frontier Of Rock and Mineral Research).