Charles Bufe

Chuck earned an MS in Geophysical Engineering in 1960 and an MS in Geophysics in 1962, both from Michigan Tech. After leaving Michigan Tech, he became a Lieutenant in the NOAA Officer Corps before obtaining his PhD from the University of Michigan in 1969, where he also worked at Willow Run Labs. Throughout his career, Chuck has worked for NOAA in San Francisco, CA and as a Visiting Professor at the University of Wisconsin; Milwaukee. The last part of his career was spent working for the US Geological Survey where has was stationed in: Menlo Park, CA; Washington, DC (as a liaison to DOE and to FEMA); Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (as advisor the Saudi version of NSF and a university); and finally as a research geophysicist in Golden, CO. He retired from the USGS in 2006 and has since been appointed Scientist Emeritus with the USGS.

 

During his career, Chuck has worked on induced seismicity where he has led much of the discussion on time-varying properties of seismicity rates, championing the point of view that these rates vary over time, related to global strain changes after extremely large earthquakes.  He continues to be active in this debate, and provides a model of never retiring from intellectual and data-driven discussions.