Research partner, SNSF Assistant Professor

After his university education in physics, Fabian Walter turned to glaciology and seismology during his PhD work at ETH Zürich (2005-2009). Until the present day, Fabian Walter’s research has focused on seismic applications in glaciology and natural hazards.

Fabian Walter combines field studies with seismic source theory to study sliding processes and near-surface hydraulics in the context of glacier dynamics and Alpine mass movements. After finishing his PhD, his postdoctoral work at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (San Diego, USA) dealt with iceberg production (‘iceberg calving’) of Alaskan Glaciers and ice streams in Greenland and Antarctica. Subsequently, in 2011, he led a seismic deployment on the Greenland ice sheet to study water flow within and under the ice sheet and stick-slip micro-seismicity at the ice sheet base. During his Marie Curie Fellowship at ISTerre, Grenoble (2012-2014), he furthermore studied background seismicity on glaciers and ice sheets to investigate their subsurface structure with purely passive techniques.

In 2015 Fabian Walter was awarded an Assistant Professorship grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) to start a research group in glacier seismology focusing on glacial hazards. He has since been working on structural and monitoring studies of unstable glaciers using passive seismic techniques. He has furthermore extended his research to hazardous mass movements such as debris flows and rock avalanches.

Updated on 20 mars 2018