Geoffrey Abers, the William and Katherine Snee Professor in Geological Sciences in Cornell’s Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, has been selected by the American Geophysical Union (AGU) to deliver the 2026 Beno Gutenberg Lecture, an annual honor recognizing outstanding contributions to the field of seismology.
AGU announced Abers as the 2026 recipient on Sept. 23 as part of its annual recognition of honorees across the Earth and space sciences.
Established in 1989, the Beno Gutenberg Lecture honors the life and work of renowned seismologist Beno Gutenberg. The Gutenberg Lecture is intended to showcase leading research in seismology to the broader geosciences community.
Abers is a geophysicist whose research uses earthquake seismology to investigate the forces, material cycles and deep structure of the Earth. Much of his work focuses on active plate boundaries and particularly subduction zones, where one tectonic plate descends beneath another. These regions produce the planet’s largest earthquakes and many of its most destructive volcanic eruptions.
His research has involved deploying dense arrays of broadband seismographs on land and offshore to create detailed images of the Earth’s crust and mantle. Abers and his collaborators have conducted major field projects in Alaska, Central America, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, and the Pacific Northwest, using seismic observations to study processes including the movement of fluids deep within the Earth, the plumbing systems beneath volcanic arcs and the behavior of megathrust faults capable of producing magnitude 9 earthquakes.
Abers earned his bachelor’s degree from Brown University in 1983 and his doctorate from MIT in 1989. Before joining Cornell in 2014, he held research or faculty positions at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, the University of Kansas and Boston University. He is a fellow of AGU and the Geological Society of America.
Abers will present the Beno Gutenberg Lecture during AGU26 in San Francisco, CA, this December.