MIT EAPS Directory

Camilla Cattania is a seismologist with experience in numerical modeling, earthquake physics, and statistical seismology. She has developed new models of aftershock triggering based on static stress changes and studied swarms drive by magmatic intrusions and dynamic triggering. A separate but complementary aspect of her research consists of analytical and numerical modeling of slip on a single fault. Cattania has applied ideas from fracture mechanics to investigate the interaction between seismic and aseismic slip on isolated asperities, a topic she is now exploring in a wider range of tectonic settings and including additional physical processes.

Cattania's theoretical and computational studies of earthquakes complement current research in seismology, geomechanics, and rock physics at EAPS and MIT’s Civil and Environmental Engineering, via the Earth Resources Laboratory.

Cattania received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Cambridge in experimental and theoretical physics. She earned a PhD in geophysics from the GFZ German Research Center for Geosciences/University of Potsdam, where she was a guest scientist. She later joined the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution as a guest investigator, before becoming a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University.