The SCEC/ACCESS (Southern California Earthquake Center Advancement of Cyberinfrastructure Careers through Earthquake System Science) internship program welcomed its first students in summer, 2007, with one graduate (ACCESS-G) and two undergraduate (ACCESS-U) interns. The ACCESS program ended in 2010 and is no longer accepting any students. ACCESS achieved its goals of cyberworkforce development and provided students with exciting projects, a stimulating environment, and adequate preparation to ensure success. Participation in the SCEC Undergraduate Studies in Earthquake Information Technology (SCEC/USEIT) internship program was one way that students received hands-on experience with team-based, cross-disciplinary science – two basic skills for system scientists. Although it was not pre-requisite, the first ACCESS interns had association with SCEC/USEIT and such connections persisted as ACCESS evolved.

Recruitment of students, mentors, and projects for ACCESS was done on a case-by-case basis. Successful SCEC interns and promising applicants were invited to apply; and they worked with key participants in SCEC IT research.

Because ACCESS research was coordinated with fixed annual cycles of admission and thesis production at institutions with varied rules and cycles, it required a fairly long lead-time to populate the program.

		Jennifer Hairston Degree: B.A., 2007, Wilberforce University, OH Major: Computer Engineering Mentors: Tom Jordan & Phil Maechling
Jennifer Hairston learned about SCEC from alumni of the 2006 SCEC/USEIT program. Exceptionally motivated to improve her computer skills and succeed, this first generation college student had excellent potential, but at the time when she graduated in December of 2007 it was too late for a senior thesis and too early for graduate work; so instead, Jennifer first participated in SCEC/USEIT, opting for the toughest assignments so that she could learn the most. She also became a mentor to computer science novices on the USEIT team. In January 2008, she was able to begin an ACCESS-G internship at the University of Southern California.

Gideon Juve Degree Held: B.S., Computer Science, University of Southern California, 2004 Major: MS Computer Science - High Performance Computing and Simulation ACCESS-G Mentors: Tom Jordan & Phil Maechling

		Emmett McQuinn Degree Held: B.S., Computer Science and Mathematical Science, Clemson University Major: MS Computer Science - High Performance Computing and Simulation ACCESS-G Mentors: Tom Jordan, Bernard Minster (UCSD), & Phil Maechling ACCESS-G Research Plan: Emmett’s research plan is currently under development.
Emmett McQuinn is an alumnus of the 2007 SCEC/USEIT internship program. In 2008 he graduated from Clemson University with a B.S. in Computer Science and Mathematical Science. Emmett is starting as a first year graduate student in computer science at the University of California, San Diego in Fall 2008.

		Ryan Berti Degree: B.S., 2010, University of Southern California, CA Major: Computer Science ACCESS-U Mentors: Tom Jordan & Geoffrey Ely
Ryan Berti was a SCEC/USEIT intern during the summer of 2008. He is a computer science major and a media minor at the University of Southern California. During the summer he showed an interest in three-dimensional programming. Ryan is now working with Geoffrey Ely on seismic shake visualizations. They produce these visualizations from large sets of complex data in a multi-step process. Ryan is working to encapsulate the process to reduce the multiple stages of production. He will be using python batch scripts to generate the visuals through an open source software called paraview. The software will be very useful for future computation as it has the ability to run in parallel on multiple processor arrays. Ryan's goal is to have a web-based application for viewing shake visualizations and submitting seismic data.

		Christiann Boutwell Degree: B.A., 2009, University of South Carolina, SC Major: Geophysics ACCESS-U Mentors: Tom Jordan (USC), Peter Powers (USC) & Thomas Owens (South Carolina)
Christiann Boutwell was a SCEC/SURE intern during the summer of 2008. She is a geophysics major and a mathematics minor at the University of South Carolina. She is investigating the depth localization of seismicity on strike-slip faults in California. Depth localization of seismicity on strike-slip faults in California by Christiann Boutwell Gaining a greater understanding and communicating useful knowledge of earthquakes is important for issues of both scientific and societal concern especially relating to seismic hazard and risk assessment. I, with the guidance of my mentors, contribute to the expansion of earthquake understanding by means of investigating three-dimensional distributions of earthquake ruptures along California strike-slip faults. Previous work by Powers and Jordan (in prep.) shows that the average rate of small earthquakes along California strike-slip faults obeys a power-law of the form R~(x^2 + d^2)^(- γ /2), where the rate R is in events/km^2, x is the distance from a fault, γ is the decay rate of seismicity, and d is the near-fault inner scale. However, they do not consider the depth variability of earthquake hypocenters. We therefore perform a reconnaissance of their fault-referenced data set to determine if there is significant on-fault versus off-fault variability in earthquake depths. Results show interesting regional variations. In southern California, on-fault earthquake hypocenters are strongly localized in depth, but become more distributed with distance from a fault. In contrast, variance of hypocenter depths in northern California is similar both on and off of faults. Similar regional variations are observed for γ and d, so depth variance likely correlates with fault properties such as seismic productivity, creep rate, and cumulative offset. These results have important implications for fault-based models of seismicity, which can be used to improve current earthquake forecasting methods such as the epidemic type aftershock sequence (ETAS) model.

		Amy Coddington Degree: B.A., 2008, Macalester College, MN Major: Mathematics and Music ACCESS-U Mentors: Tom Jordan & Jeremy Zechar
Amy Coddington first tried her hand at programming as a 2005 SCEC/USEIT intern. Based on this highly successful experience, she pursued computer science coursework and an internship at a Minnesota supercomputing center. She returned to SCEC in 2007 to conduct senior thesis research with Tom Jordan, also working closely with PhD student Jeremy Zechar (another SCEC/USEIT alumnus). She completed her thesis under their guidance and that of an advisor at her college. Abstract submitted to 2007 SCEC Annual Meeting: Examining Earthquake Magnitude Errors by Amy Coddington, Jeremy Zechar, and Thomas Jordan When an earthquake is recorded at multiple stations, the reported magnitude has some measurement uncertainty due to the location and infrastructure of the stations. In formulating and testing earthquake forecast models -- such as those under investigation by the Collaboratory for the Study of Earthquake Predictability (CSEP) -- magnitude uncertainty is often neglected or assumed to be normally distributed and independent of the reported magnitude. Using synthetic earthquake catalogs, we have investigated the effect of different magnitude error distributions on the Gutenberg-Richter a and b-values. Our results show that, for all of the distributions considered, the a value is increased, whereas the b-value effect varies with the form and parameters of the error distribution. We have begun analyzing the SCSN and NCSN catalogs to determine the observed error distribution in Southern and Northern California. Our findings will be useful to CSEP testing as they seek to account for magnitude uncertainty in their testing program. This research has been supported by the Advancement of Cyberinfrastructure Careers through Earthquake System Science-Undergraduate (ACCESS-U) program, initiated to provide a link between the purely scholastic nature of undergraduate programs and the problem-solving nature of graduate programs.

		Brittney Miller Degree: B.A., 2010, University of Southern California, CA Major: Physics and Mathematics ACCESS-U Mentors: Tom Jordan & Wayne Shoaf
Brittney Miller was a SCEC/USEIT intern during the summer of 2008. She is a physics and mathematics double major at the University of Southern California. As computer-based technology is readily becoming more available and digital material is continuously being created, the need for a digital library emerges. The purpose of the Digital Library created for the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) during the summer of 2008 is to communicate the Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast (UCERF), Version 2 report, as well as to digitally preserve its contents and related materials. SCEC’s digital library is supported by the University of Southern California (USC) Libraries system, from which assets and metadata records are accessible to the public. Brittney will continue work on this project as an ACCESS-U intern.

		Javier Rosa Degree: B.A., 2010, Rutgers University, NJ Major: Computer Science ACCESS-U Mentors: Tom Jordan & Geoffrey Ely
Javier Rosa was a SCEC/USEIT intern during the summer of 2008. Javier's ACCESS – U project involves finite-element meshing of the San Andreas fault system in order to understand how fault kinks and other changes affect the dynamics of propagating fault ruptures.

		Michael Steffeck Degree Expected: B.S., 2009, University of California, Santa Cruz Major: Computer Science ACCESS-U Mentors: Tom Jordan & Emily Brodsky
Michael Steffeck is pursuing a B.S. degree in Computer Science at the University of California Santa Cruz. For his senior thesis Michael is working on developing a visualization package for LiDAR data called SlugView.