Rate My Professor Greg Yaxley

Professor Greg Yaxley serves as Professor of Experimental Petrology in the Research School of Earth Sciences at the Australian National University. He holds a PhD from the University of Tasmania. His research utilizes high-pressure experimentation at pressures up to 25 GPa and temperatures up to 2000°C with piston-cylinder and multi-anvil apparatuses, integrated with synchrotron spectroscopy and quantitative microbeam analysis of experimental products and natural samples, to probe processes in the deep mantle and crust. Key research specializations encompass the formation and evolution of carbonatites and associated igneous and metasomatic rocks; critical metals deposits including rare earth elements and niobium in carbonatites or tantalum in cassiterite with granitoid rocks; roles of volatile components in deep mantle partial melting that contribute to large igneous provinces and volcanism; petrology and geochemistry of the mantle lithosphere, particularly cratonic mantle; experimental calibration of diamond indicator minerals as geothermobarometers and oxybarometers for diamond potential assessment in kimberlites; and the Earth's deep carbon cycle, including the fate of subducted carbonate-bearing oceanic crust.

Yaxley's distinguished career at the ANU Research School of Earth Sciences includes positions as Postdoctoral Fellow (1993-1996), ARC Postdoctoral Fellow (1997-1999), Research Fellow in PRISE (2001-2009), ARC Future Fellow (2010-2013), Professor of Experimental Petrology (2014-present), and Head of the Geochemistry Research Area (2021-2024). He was an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the Institute of Mineralogy, Frankfurt University in 1999 and became a Fellow of the Geological Society of Australia in 2021. Among his highly influential publications are 'The amount of recycled crust in sources of mantle-derived melts' (Sobolev et al., 2007), 'Evidence for carbonatite metasomatism in spinel peridotite xenoliths from western Victoria, Australia' (Yaxley et al., 1991), 'Reactions between eclogite and peridotite: mantle refertilisation by subduction of oceanic crust' (Yaxley and Green, 1998), and 'Phase relations of carbonate-bearing eclogite assemblages from 2.5 to 5.5 GPa: implications for petrogenesis of carbonatites' (Yaxley and Brey, 2004). As Co-Chief Investigator in the ANU node of the ARC Industrial Transformation Training Centre in Critical Resources for the Future, he supervises postgraduate students including Ramkumar Arcot Parthiban, Rodrigo de Freitas Rodrigues, and Weipin Sun.