Fabrice Gaillard, Institute of Earth Sciences at Orléans, France
2021 Science Innovation Award medallist
Fabrice Gaillard is an experimental geochemist and geophysicist with a consolidated background in petrology and chemical thermodynamics. He is best known for his contributions to the understanding of volatile elements in magmatic systems with implications for the mantle and crust geodynamics, but he also contributed to model mantle degassing and its relationships with atmospheric evolution on Earth and beyond. He received his B.S. degree in Geological Sciences at the University of Grenoble in 1996, and his M.S. degree and PhD degrees at the University of Orléans in 1997 and 2001, respectively. He has been postdoc research associates at the Bayerisches GeoInstitut (BGI, 2001-2005). In 2005 he joined the CNRS (French national centre for scientific research), and since then he has been working at the ISTO (Institute of Earth Sciences at Orléans). In 2015, he obtained the highest French degree, the “habilitation à diriger des recherches”, and became director of research at CNRS in 2018. Since 2017, he is head of the “MAGMA” group at ISTO. Fabrice has coordinated 3 ANR grants (French agency for research) and 1 ERC project (European research council). He has supervised 6 PhD students and 7 postdoctoral research associates.
Part of Fabrice’s research has aimed at reconciling geophysical imaging of the Earth’s interior with petrological and geochemical models. There is indeed a gap between mineral physics models that inspire geophysical interpretations and petrological models that inspire geochemical interpretations. The experimental efforts led by Fabrice’s group significantly bridged this gap by providing laboratory constraints on the electrical conductivity of a variety of volatile-bearing melts. Thanks to this work, the complexity arising from the diversity and the multicomponent nature of deep magmas could be converted into a range of values of electrical conductivity. This methodology, friendly named “electrical petrology”, has been applied to remotely decipher magmatic processes in the mantle and the crust from oceanic to collisional settings, including arc settings. Another side of Fabrice’s research has been dedicated to the modelling of magmatic degassing and its impact on the chemistry of planetary surfaces. This work has shown that a significant part of the diversity of planetary surficial chemistry can be related to the diversity of composition of volcanic gases. Knowledge of the volatile abundances and redox state of the planetary interiors can render planetary surface chemistry predictable. Lastly, Fabrice has been recently working on the more immediate aspect of metal resources associated to magmatism. He addresses, by means of experimental petrology, the fate of rare metals, rare earth and chalcophile elements during magmatic differentiation and ore formation in basaltic to carbonatitic intrusions.
Additional information can be found here and a list of publications, abstracts and projects here.