Ross Stein, CEO of Temblor, Inc., studies how earthquakes interact by the transfer of stress. He is Past President of the Tectonophysics section of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), received the 2012 Gilbert F. White Natural Hazards Award of the AGU, and has delivered AGU’s Francis Birch Lecture, Gilbert White Lecture, and its Frontiers of Geophysics Lecture. He gave a 2012 TEDx talk, ‘Defeating Earthquakes,’ and was keynote speaker at the Smithsonian for the Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching. He was Winter 2014 Distinguished Lecturer of the Stanford School of Earth Sciences, and was a public speaker in the 2015-2016 MPSF Speaker Series, the largest community public speaker series in the U.S., with 9,000 attendees.
Ross Stein received an Sc.B. from Brown University magna cum laude and with honors, and a Ph.D. from Stanford University. He is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the Geological Society of America, was Editor of the Journal of Geophysical Research in 1986-89, and later chaired AGU’s Board of Journal Editors. In 2003, the Science Citation Index reported that Stein was the second most-cited author in earthquake science during the preceding decade; he was the 10th most cited during 1900-2010.
Stein received the Eugene M. Shoemaker Distinguished Achievement Award of the USGS, the Excellence in Outreach Award of the Southern California Earthquake Center, and the Outstanding Contributions and Cooperation in Geoscience Award from NOAA. He has carried out research for NASA, FEMA, US Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, Swiss Re and Zurich Insurance Group. In 2009 Stein cofounded the Global Earthquake Model (GEM Foundation), a public-private partnership building the first seismic risk model for the world, and chaired GEM’s Science Board for 5 years. At Stanford, Stein teaches ‘Scientific Presentation and Public Speaking’ to Ph.D. students in the earth sciences.
Ross Stein has appeared in many documentary films, including the Emmy-nominated documentary, ‘Killer Quake’ (NOVA, 1995), the four-part ‘Great Quakes’ series (Discovery, 1997-2001), and the multiple award-winning 2004 National Geographic IMAX movie ‘Forces of Nature,’ which he helped to write and animate.
Public Speaking
Stein was a 2015-2016 presenter in the MPSF Speaker Series in the S.F. Bay area, giving 4 presentations to a total of 8,000 attendees, and scored as one of the top three public speakers in the past 5 years. His overall score was 95%, and 97% said they would recommend him to a friend.
Stein was keynote speaker at the Smithsonian Institution for the 2005 Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching, and gave a 2012 TEDx Bermuda talk, ‘Defeating Earthquakes.’ He was Winter 2014 Distinguished Lecturer of the School of Earth Sciences of Stanford University. Stein delivered the American Geophysical Union’s Francis Birch Lecture for Tectonophysics, its Gilbert White Lecture for Natural Hazards, and its most prestigious, The Frontiers of Geophysics Lecture. He has spoken at about 60 universities and research institutions over the past decade.
Documentaries, IMAX, TV, Radio, and Corporate Speaking
Ross has appeared in many documentaries, including the Emmy-nominated documentary, Killer Quake (NOVA, 1995), the four-part Great Quakes series (Discovery, 1997-2001), Earthquake Storms (BBC Horizons/Discovery, 2003). He appeared in the multiple award-winning 2004 National Geographic IMAX movie Forces of Nature, which he helped to write and animate. Stein has been on NPR’s News Hour and Science Friday and CNN three times each, and on NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered about a dozen times. He is frequently interviewed by the San Francisco Bay area TV and radio news stations, and quoted in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, LA Times, SF Chronicle, Science and Nature. Stein has addressed the Board of Directors of Farmers Insurance, the Managing Directors of Goldman Sachs in Salt Lake City, San Francisco and Tokyo, and given presentations at the corporate headquarters of Swiss Re (NYC and Tokyo) and Zurich Insurance Group (Zurich).