Michael Taylor had already embarked on a career as a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey at Wood's Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts when Professor An Yin came by to present a paper, "The Tibetan Plateau in Four Dimensions." Although the geography was new to Michael, he knew quite a bit about plate tectonics, a major factor that shaped both the undersea environment and Tibet. Impressed by Professor Yin's work and enthusiasm for the sciences, Michael decided on a career change and says he "pursued it pretty aggressively.

In 1999, Michael found himself headed toward the Tibetan Plateau himself, to see those four dimensions himself. To visit the plateau, an immense upland that contains almost all of the world's territory above 5,000 meters, most travelers arrive by air at Lhasa. From there it's a three- to five-day drive across roads barely worth the name to central Tibet, where Michael pursues his research.

The plateau is not a particularly inviting place: very dry rolling terrain, high winds, sparse vegetation, and wild grazing animals. For geologists, however, it's paradise. The mountains that ring the plateau were formed about 55 million years ago when the continental land mass now called India collided with the rest of Asia. "If you want to learn about deformation of the continental crust—how continental collisions look in the initial stages, Tibet is one of the best places to go," Michael says.

On a typical day, he and his colleagues "get up, have some breakfast, and go mapping." The first step is to identify an area and an interesting question that might be answered by examining it: what's the history of the plateau? how do earthquakes happen? how do faults begin? "Then we hike to that area and look at the rocks and how different rocks are in contact with each other," Michael says.

Team members carry a map board, pencil, compass, and GPS to provide their location. "We go out there and try to sketch the geology as we see it," Michael explains. Drawing skills are highly valued. Using a topographic base with contour lines that show elevations, Michael adds relevant information, for example, about where different kinds of rock exist and how their contacts intersect with topography.

Michael is now a veteran traveler to Tibet, examining how the plateau continues to be deformed by the geologic stresses it experiences. Using data gathered by satellites, Michael is able to measure the motion of the earth's surface in the present day, comparing that to what can be inferred about past motion. His work examines zones where faults move horizontally and where there's geometric interplay between different fault systems. Both characteristics can also be applied to California's San Andreas fault.

Indeed, one of the advantages of the Tibetan Plateau is that it allows study of fault structures without the kinds of changes due to time and human interference that make the San Andreas and other California faults less accessible and thus more difficult to understand. Even if the freeways and mini-malls would disappear, California's land mass is still much older than Tibet's. Study of any fault system increases understanding of the seismic cycle—quakes and the intervening periods—on all fault systems, and that is one goal of geologists.

The writing of Michael' dissertation will be made easier by experience he has gained as a graduate student with Professor Yin. A paper about his Tibet findings won Michael the American Geophysical Union's Outstanding Student Paper Award in the Tectonophysics section for 2001. Professor Yin "strongly encourages his students to first-author all their papers," Michael says, and provides guidance on article writing and all other aspects of being a graduate student. "The success of scientists is gauged by their writing and their publications. If it's not published, it didn't happen," Michael says. "That doesn't get brought home to you until you're a graduate student."

Professor Yin's students also learn about grant applications. While the professor "pretty much funds everything," Michael says, "we help him in writing proposals." The National Science Foundation and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories are primary sources of funding of UCLA's research on the Tibetan Plateau, but Professor Yin requires his students to apply for multiple funding sources, Michael says. "He lets us be independent."

According to Professor Yin, Michael has taken advantage of that opportunity to become "the most independent student I have supervised in my 16 years at UCLA. Mike's best quality is his enthusiasm for research. He is hard-working and perseverant."

Published in Spring 2003, Graduate Quarterly