Valentin Gischig has been awarded the AGU Natural Hazards Focus Group Award for Graduate Research, given annually to a recent Ph.D. recipient for outstanding contributions to natural hazards research. Gischig’s thesis is entitled “Kinematics and failure mechanisms of the Randa rock slope instability (Switzerland).” He presented an invited talk and was formally presented with the award at the 2011 AGU Fall Meeting, held 5–9 December in San Francisco, Calif.
Gischig received his M.Sc. in geophysics and glaciology at Eidgenössiche Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich, in Switzerland, in 2007. In 2011 he attained a Ph.D. in engineering geology/rock mechanics/landslide analysis under the supervision of Simon Loew, Jeffrey R. Moore, Florian Amann, and Keith F. Evans at ETH Zürich. Gischig is currently conducting postdoctoral research at ETH Zürich. His research interests include landslides, induced seismicity in enhanced geothermal systems, and coupled processes in rock mechanics.