"It has been very exciting for me to learn geophysics and apply it to find solutions to real life problems."

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José Navarro

Born in Barcelona, Spain, 1965
High School in Barcelona, Spain

and Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts

B.Sc. Physics

Stanford University, 1988

 

Ph.D. Astronomy

Caltech, 1994

Jansky Postdoctoral Fellow

Very Large Array in New Mexico National Radio Astronomy Observatory

I grew up in Barcelona, Spain, and all my life have been very interested in all fields of science. Initially I was most interested in biology and astronomy, so I studied insects first with a friend and then at the Natural History Museum, and also started an astronomy club with my neighbor and later helped track known asteroids at the city observatory. All my spare time was spent reading (mostly science), playing volleyball and hiking in the mountains.

I decided to study physics at the university and then astronomy for my doctoral degree. This is when I concentrated on pulsars and built a large machine to do realtime processing of pulsar radio signals, right at the telescope. This machine has been used at the Owens Valley Radio Observatory in California (remember the movie "The Arrival"?), then at the giant 300m Arecibo telescope ("Contact") and is now still in operation at the 64m Parkes Radio telescope in New South Wales, Australia.

I very much enjoyed living in California during my 9 years of university studies. Not only was I able to play volleyball, both indoors and outdoors, but I also did a fair amount of travelling and rock climbing. After that I became a postdoc at the Very Large Array ("2010","Contact") and did research there for two years, until I moved to Norway and joined Schlumberger Geco-Prakla in Stavanger.

Changing from astronomy to geophysics was not very hard because both use the same physics and math, as well as similar computer techniques. It has been very exciting for me to learn geophysics and apply it to find solutions to real life problems. My job consists of making images of the underground to help the oil companies in their exploration projects. Sometimes in these images you can see the oil directly, which is terrific.

After two years in Norway my wife and I moved to London, where I am the the manager for a small group that also specializes in seismic imaging.