Mathew Domeier

GD Geodynamics

The 2019 Arne Richter Award for Outstanding Early Career Scientists is awarded to Mathew Domeier for outstanding accomplishments in reconstructing tectonic plate evolution in the past 600 million years and in understanding the link between the evolution of plates and the deep Earth.

Mathew Domeier’s dedication and talent, together with his achievements in taking plate tectonics beyond established paradigms, are exceptional. One of his main research interests is the evolution of Earth for the past 600 million years. He has worked with exceptional patience for several years assembling and analysing an enormous amount of information to construct the first absolute global full-plate tectonic model for the Late Palaeozoic, a study highly cited and used by the community. This methodology is currently applied to older data (back to 600 million years), incorporating detailed reconstructions and full-plate models of complex regions such as Asia and ancient orogenies such as the Caledonian Orogeny. Domeier’s aim is to uncover the link between the evolution of lithospheric plates and the deep Earth. In 2016 he published the first quantitative demonstration of a time-depth dependent correlation between lower mantle structure and palaeo-subduction locations, and quantitatively determined the sinking rates of subducted slabs in the lower mantle. Most recently he also used geological data and seismic tomography to unravel the origin of the Hawaiian-Emperor Bend and the change in Pacific plate motion change at 47 million years ago. He is an active contributor to the University of Oxford-University of Oslo (CEED) newly developed set of open, interactive, user-friendly web-based tools to explore models of the Earth’s interior. Mathew Domeier is curiosity driven, exceptionally talented, enthusiastic, creative, a brilliant writer, skilled programmer, ambitious and extremely independent, and therefore highly deserving of an EGU Arne Richter Outstanding Early Career Scientists Award.