Geodesy Lab Personnel

Tim Dixon received a B.Sc. degree in 1974 from the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada, and Ph.D. degree in 1979 from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego. From 1979-1992, he worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. From 1992-2010 he was at the University of Miami. Since January 2011 he has been at the University of South Florida, where he is a Professor in the Department of Geology.
Rocco Malservisi received a Laurea in Fisica (Physics) from the University of Bologna in 1996 and his Ph.D. in the Geosciences from Pennsylvania State University in 2002. From 2002-2004 he worked as a post-doctoral associate at the University of Miami. From 2004-2010 he was a Junior Professor at the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, Germany. Since 2010, he has been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geology at the University of South Florida.
Denis Voytenko received his Ph.D. 2015 working under Dr. Dixon. Denis received his B.S. in geology in 2009 and his M.S., also in geology, in 2011, from the University of South Florida. Before becoming interested in geodesy, Denis's work dealt with modeling hydrographs. Denis is currently a post-doc at NYU working with Dr. David Holland working on the applications of radar remote sensing to studies of the Greenland ice sheet.
Qian Yang is a Ph.D. student in Geophysics. Her research focuses on the usage of space geodetic techniques to study crustal movements associated with ice sheet melting and carbon sequestration.
Makan Karegar is a Ph.D. student at the School of Geosciences at USF. His research interests are in applications of geodetic techniques such as GPS, InSAR and satellite/terrestrial gravity measurments to modeling of surface deformation.
Nick Voss is a Ph.D. student working under Dr. Dixon. He graduated in 2013 with a B.S. in Geology from the University of Miami. Before coming to USF, his research involved looking into the effects of large earthquakes on aquifer systems. Here at USF he is working with the Geodesy group to study subduction zone earthquakes, specifically the 2012 M 7.6 Costa Rica Earthquake.
Ophelia George is currently involved in two projects which investigate volcano-tectonic interaction: the Tohoku Volcanic Arc finite element project (an application of the finite element modeling code GTecton to investigate the effect of magma underplating on topographic variations over long time frames), and a long term study of volcanic hazards on the island of Dominica, Lesser Antilles (a combination of statistical model approaches with earthquake and deformation data for deriving dynamic hazard maps which are strongly linked with the current unrest state of the system).
Mary Njoroge graduated from Masinde Muliro University (Kakamega, Kenya) with a Bachelor’s Degree in Education (Sciences) in 2008. In 2012, she received a Pre-PhD diploma in Earth System Physics from International Centre for Theoretical Physics (Trieste, Italy). Currently, she is a PhD student at University of South Florida working under the mentorship of Dr. Rocco Malservisi. She is interested in rigidity of Africa plate study.
Surui Xie received his Ph.D. in 2020 from USF. He is currently a Scripps Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of California, San Diego working on instrumentation and data analysis of seafloor geodetic systems.
Fanghui Deng received her Ph.D. in Geology from the University of South Florida in 2020. She is currently a post-doc at the University of California, San Diego working on the subsidence of the Mississippi River Delta mainly using satellite data.
Mitchell Hastings is a PhD student working with Dr. Dixon and Dr. Malservisi and is interested in earthquake and volcanic deformation at plate boundaries. He received his Bachelor's of Science in Geosciences from The Pennsylvania State University in 2017 where he worked on the modeling the state of stress in the Aleutian Arc Subduction Zone as a result of large earthquakes over the last century.
Mahsa Afra is a PhD student at the school of Geosciences, USF. She received her master in Geophysics/Seismology from University of Tehran in 2015. She is working on subduction zone earthquakes and modeling of surface deformation.