Sadly again, we have to say goodbye to a dear colleague and friend. Last December 8 2015, Marco Beltrando, researcher in structural geology at the University of Torino (Italy), passed away at the age of 36 due to a mountain accident in the Canavese area (Western Alps). He was a young, enthusiastic, curious and very brilliant researcher and he loved very much both the geology of the Western Alps and the mountains themselves, where he was used to spend his free time. In his young career he reached very important results about the recognition of hyper-extended margins in the collisional belt of the Western Alps, which may be of major importance for the understanding of other orogenic belts all around the world. Another major result was the recognition of heating-cooling cycles in rift systems. In both of these fields Marco Beltrando was at the forefront of the research as shown by his numerous invitations to international conferences. Marco was able to easily connect structural geology, tectonics with petrology, geochronology, and stratigraphy and to develop new ways of thinking about extensional and collisional systems. Marco Beltrando was on his way to become one of the leaders in his field and represented a new generation of Alpine geologists.

Marco Beltrando spent some time at the Utrecht University as a student and graduated in Geology at the University of Torino in 2002. He obtained the PhD at the Australian National University in Canberra in 2007. In the last 4 years he was a researcher at the Structural Geology Group at the University of Torino where he taught Structural Geology and Regional Geology of the Aps. Just few days ago (December 4th 2105), he obtained a tenure track position for Associate professor at the University of Torino. It was a true pleasure for the committee to listen to the past and future research projects of Marco. It is very sad that Marco’s life and brilliant career terminated so suddenly at the place he felt best, in his loved mountains.

With Marco we do not only lose a friend, but also a great colleague and brilliant researcher.

Ciao Marco