I am an honorary emeritus professor at University of Geneva, Switzerland. I have a PhD from University of Bern, Switzerland (1989), after which I moved through post-doctoral researcher and lecturer positions at Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto, Canada), Centre de Géochimie de la Surface CNRS (Strasbourg, France) and ETH Zürich. I was appointed Associate Professor at University of Geneva in 2001, and Full Professor in 2008.
I have a career in geochemistry, isotope geochemistry and geochronology and I am one of the eminent specialists in high-precision U-Pb geochronology. Staying with this core competence, I have changed my fields of interest many times: I started off from magmatism in collision zones and arcs (Alps, Andes, Himalaya), I then developed into ore deposit geochronology, had some excursions into clay geochemistry and geochronology, and into high and ultrahigh metamorphism. Since many years I have been working on the exact calibration of periods of time that show dramatic changes in paleo-biodiversity and environmental conditions, at the same time concentrating on the exact timing of volcanism in Large Igneous Provinces in order to establish temporal coincidence as a measure for causality. I have always been interested in understanding the basis of our work, the response of the minerals we analyze – especially the mineral zircon – and the isotope systems we apply. In recognition of my scientific achievements, I was awarded the Bunsen Medal of the European Geoscience Union in 2021, and I was elected a Fellow of the Mineralogical Society of America in 2021, and a Geochemistry Fellow of the Geochemical Society and the European Association of Geochemistry in 2024.
I have served to the local, national and international community in many positions throughout my professional career: in local research committees and national research agencies, as a Head of Department and Head of School at University of Geneva, or as a president or director of national professional organizations and committees. I am a Scientific Editor of GEOLOGY, the most renowned scientific journal in Earth sciences.