About Me
Self Introduction
My name is Jing Ci Neo (given name: Jing Ci), and I am a PhD student. I study seismology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor with Prof. Yihe Huang.
I am from Singapore! Singapore is a tiny island country by the equator in Southeast Asia. It is really hot and humid, but with lots of great food and friendly people.
When I’m not doing my research, I like to be outdoors playing soccer, biking, or trekking. I also like reading books, playing board games, solving puzzles, and talking to/hanging out with friends.
Education
(2019 – Present)
PhD Earth and Environmental Science (Seismology)
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA
(2015-2019)
BSc Environmental Earth Systems Science (Geoscience)
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
The Road to Studying Earthquakes
Growing up on a tiny concrete island safe from all natural disasters, I never thought about the natural environment much. I always loved physics, but didn’t have any special inclination towards earth science. It all changed after a secondary school trip to Nepal. My friends and I trekked for 17 days to Kala Patthar, which at 5644m elevation, is higher than Everest Base Camp! It was a wonder-filled experience for me. I fell in love with mountains (you can probably tell from my site) and nature.
Hence, I chose to study earth science in college, and eventually Seismology because it integrates earth science and physics. The Earth Observatory of Singapore at my university had many scientists who study a wide variety of earthquake topics. I worked on projects with a few of them; they were my role models and an important part of my journey.
Then in the final year of college, I was fortunate to receive the opportunity (and funding) to travel to the University of Michigan for my undergrad thesis. I worked on my aftershocks project and had an amazing time, thanks to Yihe and all the friendly geophysics people. This experience was the key reason why I decided to do a PhD in Seismology with Yihe.
We stopped on the way to Kala Patthar to make our own big pile of rocks. I am standing to the rightmost of the picture. On another trip to the Himalayas, I got headbutted by a yak 
The Geophysical Data Analysis class taught by Prof. Shengji Wei (middle). Now, we are all doing Geoscience related work, ranging from climate modeling in grad school to hazard monitoring at Facebook. I am the second from the left 
My classmates and I on a field mapping course, traipsing over moraines and camping by the river
UMich and Mich State U adopted a USTA seismometer, and water leaked inside the seismometer so we went to fix it. I’m inside the seismometer, sucking out the water
UMich Geophysics group Zoom call, 10-16-20. Covid19 has forced us all into isolation, so it was really great to chat outside of the usual group meetings 
