Research output per year
Research output per year
Accepting PhD Students
I want to know how the Earth works…
I am Mark Naylor, a Reader in Computational Geoscience and Hazard Research at the School of GeoSciences at the University of Edinburgh.
Having graduated with a Master's in Physics from the University of Oxford in 2000, I have worked in Earth sciences for 20 years.
I am currently a Senior Member of the NERC Constructing a Digital Environment Expert Network. I am also the Academic Lead for IT within the School of GeoSciences.
Inspired by my time in the outdoors, I really want to know about how the Earth works. In my research, I have studied how mountains grow, landscapes evolve and the natural hazards that emerge in these dynamic systems. I particularly like to find new ways of understanding the natural world using computational, statistical and mathematical methods.
The Edinburgh-Seismicity-Hub GitHub repos hosts various seismicity analyses from my group ranging from exploratory data analyses to earthquake forecasts generated using inlabru.
Current Students
2023- Eliana Toro-Paz (NERC E4 DTP): Sediment mobility in Himalayan rivers recorded by seismic monitoring with implications for flood risk under a changing climate (2nd Supervisor)
2022- Wenjin Lu (Co-supervisor with Ian Main as lead)
2021- Man Ho Suen (2nd Supervisor, Lindgren lead supervisor) Modelling landslides with inlabru
2020-submitted Bronwyn Matthews (EPSRC): Sounding out the river – Monitoring bedload mobilisation and transport on the River Feshie
2020- Himanshu Agrawal (GCRF Tomorrows City Hub, Edinburgh/UCL): Physics-based ground-motion simulations for seismic risk assessment in rapidly urbanising environments
Completed Students
2020-2024 Farnaz Kamranzad (GCRF Tomorrows City Hub):
2019-2023 Francesco Serafini (H2020, RISE): Modelling seismicity as a spatio-temporal point process using inlabru
2016-2022 Dr Gina Geffers (NERC E3, 2nd supervisor): Model selection in earthquake recurrence relationships: b-value bias in tectonic, volcanic and induced seismological settings
2015-2020 Dr Thomas Bernard (2nd supervisor): The evolution and geomorphology of mountain landscape
2014-2019 Dr Kirsty Bayliss (EPSRC): Seismic source zonation using modern statistical methods [currently doing a postdoc on the RISE H2020 project]
2012-2016 Dr Rami Eid (EoN, 2nd supervisor): Testing of geophysical monitoring techniques using numerical leakage situations[after a postdoc, went on to work for the Geological Survey of Victoria, Australia]
2009-2011 Dr Sarah Touati (EPSRC): Complexity, aftershock sequences, and uncertainty in earthquake statistics [after a postdoc, left academia to work in health statistics at the Scottish Government]
2020-21 Calum Cuthill: Sounding out the river – Low cost seismic sensor development
2019-21 Dr Kirsty Bayliss: (i) RISE, (ii) NERC-NSF
2017-19 Dr Zhang: PUREC
2017 Dr Cartwright-Taylor: REAR
2015 – 2017 Dr Emily Kawabata: (i) RACER, (ii) PUREC
2012 – 2015 Dr Sarah Touati: PURE
2013 Dr Jen Roberts: QUIC2 Scoping
2010 – 2013 Dr Neil Burnside: (i) QICS, (ii) QICS2 Scoping, (iii) ScotPower Actuarial Risk
I teach on a broad range of courses and try to build innovative teaching in throughout. I teach coding, traditional geophysics, have created our professional placement scheme for geophysics, manage student projects on the GeoScience outreach course and teach basic field skills on our earth science degree programs.
I have specific expertise and experience in the use of Jupyter notebooks and nbgrader for teaching and assessment of Python coding. This includes its use for group projects and automated assessment and grading. The system has several advantages for online and in class learning including the ease for releasing assignments to a class because of its integration with learn, having a single notebook which includes the solutions that are removed automatically when the student version is compiled, the ability to auto and manually grade assignments, and a toolkit for providing and distributing feedback on submissions.
If you are interested, I have written a blog post on how I have adapted my teaching to meet the hybrid delivery necessitated by COVID.
I have developed the professional placement route for our geophysics degrees which provides students with the option of taking a year long professional placement sandwiched in-between the 3rd and 4th years of the standard Geophysics degree as a route to obtaining an MEarthPhys with Professional Placement. Despite the impact of COVID, 2020 sees the first student undertake a placement with the Met Office as part of their Industrial Placement scheme.
Our Geoscience Outreach Course provides students to undertake a year long 20 credit outreach project during their 4th year. This unique course provides students to take real ownership of their learning by creating their own outreach ideas, finding a client to realise their project with, delivering their outreach activity and hopefully leaving a legacy that can be taken up by others. Clients have been varied including schools, prisons, local conservation groups, refugee supporting organisations… This allows students the opportunity to develop real world skills that are not available on a traditional academic course.
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), A Discrete Element Model of Orogenesis, University of Edinburgh
Award Date: 1 Jan 2004
Master of Physics, University of Oxford
Award Date: 1 Jan 2000
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Research output: Working paper › Preprint
Naylor, M. (Participant)
Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Participation in workshop, seminar, course
Naylor, M. (Assessor)
Activity: Academic talk or presentation types › Invited talk
Matthews, B. (Assessor) & Naylor, M. (Assessor)
Activity: Academic talk or presentation types › Invited talk
Naylor, M. (Assessor)
Activity: Academic talk or presentation types › Invited talk
Naylor, M. (Assessor)
Activity: Academic talk or presentation types › Invited talk
Chapple, S. (Principal Investigator), Chapple, S. (Principal Investigator) & Naylor, M. (Co-investigator)
Natural Environment Research Council
1/04/24 → 31/03/27
Project: Research
Naylor, M. (Principal Investigator)
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
1/03/24 → 1/08/25
Project: Research
Sinclair, H. (Principal Investigator), Mudd, S. (Co-investigator) & Naylor, M. (Co-investigator)
Natural Environment Research Council
15/02/24 → 14/02/28
Project: Research
McDermott, C. (Principal Investigator) & Naylor, M. (Co-investigator)
1/09/22 → 30/09/25
Project: Research
Naylor, M. (Principal Investigator)
1/11/14 → …
Project: University Awarded Project Funding
Naylor, M. (Creator), Zenodo, 2023
Dataset
Mudd, S. (Creator), Sinclair, H. (Creator), Naylor, M. (Creator), Pokhrel, P. (Creator) & Attal, M. (Creator), Edinburgh DataShare, 26 Sept 2023
DOI: 10.7488/ds/7515
Dataset
Naylor, M. (Creator) & Serafini, F. (Creator), GitHub, 2023
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.7515785, https://github.com/edinburgh-seismicity-hub/ETAS.inlabru/
Dataset
12/10/12
1 item of Media coverage
Press/Media: Research