Harry C. Dudley Professor of Structural and Economic Geology Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Vice Provost for Research at Harvard University
John H. Shaw joined the Harvard Faculty in 1997 and leads an active research program investigating structure of the Earth's crust. Prof. Shaw's program in Structural Geology & Tectonics emphasizes: 1) studies of active faults for earthquake hazards assessment; 2) regional tectonics of mountain belts and other plate margins; 3) community fault and velocity modeling; and 4) subsurface energy development and storage, carbon sequestration, and environmental impacts associated with these activities. These efforts involve the use of modern geologic and geophysical data, including 3D seismic reflection surveys and multispectral remote sensing imagery, and advanced numerical modeling methods. Prof. Shaw leads the Structural Geology & Earth Resources Program at Harvard, an industry-academic consortium that provides data, software, and support for research.
I work on mechanics-based structural restoration. Restoration consists in recovering paleo-geometries of geological structures through time. Restoration has many applications: knowledge of the paleo-structures, strain/stress quantification, determination of fracture areas, validation of structural interpretations, etc. Several methods have been being developed since the beginning of the previous century, first based on geometrical and kinematic assumptions, and more recently on geomechanical rules.
My work consists in developing a restoration software based on geomechanics and in applying it on geological case studies. The tool I am developing is RINGMecha (http://www.ring-team.org/software/ring-libraries/44-ringmecha). The final aims are to determine the validity of this restoration method for geomechanical analysis, and to compare it to other restoration methods.