Laura Martin Wallace FRSNZ is a geodetic principal scientist who works between the University of Texas at Austin and GNS Science in New Zealand.

[1] Wallace completed a geology course during her undergraduate degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and switched her focus from literature to earth sciences.

[1] After completing her doctoral degree, Wallace moved to New Zealand to study the origins of local tectonic activity.

Wallace was involved with designing the network of the 150 continuous Global Positioning System (cGPS) reference stations that are located around New Zealand to study local geophysics.

[3] She has shown that these slip events occur on five year cycles and at depths of up to 50 km – though some are shallow enough to permit sample collection and analysis.