I am a fifth-year Ph.D. student working with Eric Kiser in the Global Seismology and Tectonics (GSAT) group at the University of Arizona. I investigate the relationships between earthquake source properties, physical mechanisms that control slip on faults, and social hazards. Our primary tool for investigating the source properties of large earthquakes is the back-projection method, for which we have developed a new genetic algorithm-based approach that selects an optimal subset of seismic stations that reduces artifacts and increases the resolution of back-projection results.