Mark Naylor

Mark Naylor is a Reader in Computational Geoscience and Hazard Research at the School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, where he also serves as Academic Lead for IT. With over 20 years of experience in Earth sciences since completing his Master's in Physics at Oxford in 2000, he has established a distinguished research career focused on understanding Earth processes through computational methods. His primary affiliations include the University of Edinburgh as his home institution and his role as a Senior Member of the NERC Constructing a Digital Environment Expert Network.

Dr. Naylor's research centers on computational approaches to understanding Earth systems, with particular emphasis on seismic monitoring of bedload transport in mountain rivers, statistical forecasting of earthquakes and other hazards, earthquake hazard assessment, mountain belt growth, erosion processes, and foreland basin evolution. His work bridges geoscience, statistics, and computational methods, often employing innovative approaches to analyze complex natural systems. He has made significant contributions to the development of the ETAS.inlabru package for earthquake forecasting and has published extensively on proper scoring rules for evaluating seismic forecasts.

His publication record shows a strong trajectory of high-impact research, with recent work focusing on Bayesian approaches to seismicity modeling, earthquake forecast evaluation, and the application of statistical methods to diverse geoscience problems. The trend in his publications demonstrates increasing sophistication in computational methods and growing interdisciplinary collaboration, particularly with statisticians and computer scientists.

• Senior Member of the NERC Constructing a Digital Environment Expert Network
• Principal Investigator for multiple significant research projects including EPSRC Studentship, Galleries2Callories, and Dynamic Risks for Cascading Himalayan Hazards
• Active contributor to the Collaboratory for the Study of Earthquake Predictability (CSEP)

As a supervisor, Dr. Naylor currently mentors three PhD students and has successfully guided numerous students to completion of their degrees. His research group, the Edinburgh-Seismicity-Hub, maintains active GitHub repositories with open-source tools for seismicity analysis. He has secured substantial research funding from NERC, EPSRC, and other sources to support his innovative work at the intersection of geoscience and computational statistics.

His laboratory work focuses on seismic monitoring applications, particularly the development of low-cost sensor systems for river monitoring and earthquake detection. The group's work represents a unique blend of theoretical statistical development and practical field applications, creating a dynamic research environment that bridges computational theory with real-world geoscience problems.