Simon Klemperer in Nepal

Simon Klemperer became a professor of geophysics after studying at Cambridge University and Cornell University. He has taken a special interest in introducing Stanford undergraduates to scientific research, helping to found the Stanford Earth Summer Undergraduate Research program (SESUR), and has involved students in his fieldwork on three continents (including Tibet!). He initially visited the Himalayas and Tibet in 1992 as part of an international research team that acquired the first deep seismic imaging of the earthquake faults beneath the world’s highest mountains, establishing a new paradigm for the creation of plateaux. Over the next decade, he and his Stanford students and collaborators developed an integrated geotransect across the entire Tibetan Plateau. Simon has crisscrossed Tibet and the Himalayas on more than a dozen expeditions, most recently sampling and even discovering geothermal springs, using their chemistry to test ideas from his seismic images. In 2015, the devastating earthquake in Nepal led him to deploy Stanford seismographs to help study the fault shapes and future hazards.

On this program, Simon will enlighten travelers on the plate tectonics of the Himalayas that created Earth’s highest mountain; the 2015 earthquakes and landslides in Nepal; and the role of the Himalayas in Earth’s climate cycle and its future, always with an eye to how geology has shaped society. Simon also hopes to sample one or more warm springs on our trek, adding some science to our travels. He has hiked up to (and beyond) Everest Base Camp on the north (Tibetan) side and led Stanford travelers to the southern, Nepali, base camp.

• Professor of geophysics, Stanford

• Professor (by courtesy), geological sciences, Stanford

• BA, mineralogy and petrology, Cambridge University

• MA, Cambridge University

• PhD, geophysics, Cornell University