Rate My Professor Lauren Waszek

Dr. Lauren Waszek serves as Senior Lecturer at James Cook University in the College of Science and Engineering, where she is recognized as a physicist and global seismologist. Her research centers on the seismic properties of Earth’s deep interior, spanning the inner core to the upper mantle, elucidating connections between seismic structures, mantle convection, composition, and geodynamical processes. She obtained her PhD in 2012, along with MSci and BA degrees in 2008, all from the University of Cambridge. Professionally, she progressed from Junior Research Fellow at Cambridge (2012-2015) and Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Maryland (2015-2016) to Assistant Professor at New Mexico State University (2016-2021), and ARC DECRA Fellow first at the Australian National University (2017-2020) and then at James Cook University (2020-2023), advancing to her current role in 2024.

Waszek has garnered significant recognition through awards and grants, including the ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award Fellowship, ARC Discovery Project DP220102815 (“A new journey to the Earth's inner core: a planet within a planet”, 2022), DE170100329 (“Constraining the relationship between mantle discontinuities and convection processes beneath the Australian Plate”, 2017), and U.S. NSF grants EAR-1853662 (2019) and EAR-1661985 (2017). Her prolific publication record features influential papers such as “A poorly mixed mantle transition zone and its thermal state inferred from seismic waves” (Science, 2021), “Basaltic reservoirs in the Earth’s mantle transition zone” (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2022), “Seismic insights into Earth's core” (Nature Communications, 2023), “Thermochemistry of the Mantle Transition Zone Beneath the Western Pacific” (Geophysical Research Letters, 2024), and “ScS Reverberations Map Widespread Subducted Slab Stagnation in the Mantle Transition Zone” (Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, 2025). She pioneers machine learning applications, like convolutional neural networks for automatic seismic phase identification (Geophysical Research Letters, 2021), and supervises PhD research on deep seismic structures in Northern Queensland for mineral systems. Additionally, she teaches core physics courses including Physics of the Earth, Solar System, and Universe, and contributes to projects on seismic interpretation and critical mineral deposits.