Campus Close-Up

Going Deep with Data to Image and Imagine the Earth

October 2025

If you dig, even with the best drill rigs on Earth, you won’t get very deep. If you add large amounts of data and some math, you can go a hundred times deeper, says Suzan van der Lee, Sarah Rebecca Roland Professor and chair of Northwestern University’s Department of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences (DEEPS).

Data-driven imaging of Earth’s depths has revealed structures that reflect sunken tectonic plates, provide insight into current geohazards like earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and herald our future on a geological time scale.

Uncovering the secrets of our planet’s spheres and systems can help us prepare for a more sustainable future. “By understanding how the Earth works, we can anticipate how it is going to react when we mine resources and store waste,” Van der Lee says. “When you have data and understanding, you can more sustainably address the challenges and opportunities Earth offers.”

Van der Lee has spent more than two decades at Northwestern advancing the field of seismology and the science of geophysics in an interdisciplinary department that has experienced its own evolution.

When she joined the University in 2003, she worked in the Department of Geological Sciences and taught courses in seismology and inverse methods (a precursor of machine learning). Recognizing the benefits of interdisciplinary collaboration and responding to the growing interest in renewable energy, decarbonization, and sustainability, Van der Lee helped launch DEEPS, a merger of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and the program in environmental sciences, in 2024.

Today, the trailblazing department serves a broad cross-section of students and faculty. “You can’t study the physics of the Earth in isolation,” Van der Lee says. “You need to understand geology, geochemistry, geobiology, environmental science, and data science.”

This mission aligns with Northwestern’s emphasis on interdisciplinary thinking and innovation, creating an environment where complex research questions can thrive.

Van der Lee’s research group has made notable discoveries, including how tectonic plates descend into the Earth’s mantle and drive water and carbon underground, what caused North America to nearly split into two continents 1.1 billion years ago, as well as how small earthquakes in the middle of a tectonic plate may relate to human activity like mining.

Her research group has developed machine learning algorithms that harness the power of data analytics and artificial intelligence—a University priority—to detect and characterize seismic signals that belong to tiny earthquakes, tremors, and explosions but are buried within larger signals from environmental noise or a large earthquake. Her group is combining a vast quantity of background noise data recorded in the middle of a continent to harvest signals that monitor the changing intensity of surrounding oceanic waves and storms and reveal properties of the Earth’s crust near the surface.

A 2024 inductee into the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Van der Lee has spent most of her career collecting and analyzing massive amounts of seismic data to image the Earth’s interior and understand the processes that drive natural phenomena, such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and continental drift.

She seeks ways to make Earth science more accessible to people around the world. Van der Lee and collaborators launched a mobile app, Earthtunes, which allows users to listen to seismic waves as audio. The project—developed with the help of students, artists, and engineers—turns complex datasets into interactive tools.

Department research spans a wide range of areas from geohazards to decarbonization. The work is funded by multiple federal agencies, as well as individual philanthropy. With additional support, Van der Lee hopes to expand these efforts, apply their insights to other fields, and strengthen bridges to solution science.

Most of the engineers and physicists who studied under Van der Lee find jobs in research labs, government agencies, industry, and academia. Some have gone into medicine, applying their understanding of seismology and tomography to heart monitoring and the development of new devices that image a person’s body without x-rays.

At Northwestern, digging deep doesn’t stop within the Earth’s crust. Whether charting what lies beneath the planet’s surface or studying new ways to support life above it, Van der Lee and DEEPS are crossing disciplines and leveraging machine learning to build a more sustainable, interconnected future.