The Archean Earth

Dr. Homann received his MSc in Geology from the University of Potsdam, Germany, in 2010 and his PhD in Geobiology from the Free University of Berlin, Germany, in 2016. After three years of postdoctoral research at the University of Western Brittany in France, he worked as an Assistant Professor in Sedimentology at University College London until the end of 2022. Following a brief appointment as a Visiting Associate at the California Institute of Technology from 2023 to 2024, he became a Research Investigator at the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science in 2025 and currently also works as a Senior Consultant for Amentum Ltd.

His research focuses on the Archean biosphere-specifically, the environments where microbial life thrived billions of years ago and the morphological and geochemical traces it left behind in Earth's oldest sedimentary archives. He uses a multidisciplinary approach that combines field-generated data with lab-based observations, experiments, and geochemical analysis.

Professor Wladyslaw Altermann is a regional geologist with expertise in Precambrian sedimentary systems, carbonate rocks, early life evolution, and more recently, CO? sequestration in South Africa. Originally from Poland, he earned his MSc and PhD (Dr. rer. nat.) at the Free University of Berlin (West), focusing on Permo-Carboniferous rocks of Thailand and Malaysia. He also worked for the German Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR) in Hannover and in Peru.

In 1988, Prof. Altermann moved to South Africa, which became his third home. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Stellenbosch, he returned to Germany to join LMU Munich, where he completed his second doctorate (Dr. habil.) in 1998, studying Archean carbonates, stromatolites, BIFs, and the western Kaapvaal Craton's structural geology.

Prof. Altermann held postdoctoral positions at UCLA (USA), CBM-CNRS Orleans (France), and the University of Western Australia (Perth). He later became Associate Professor at LMU Munich, where he served as interim chair for several professorial positions and served as Honorary Professor at Shandong University of Technology (China) from 2003 to 2005. In 2009, he returned permanently to South Africa, joining the University of Pretoria as the Kumba-Exxaro Chair in Geodynamics of Mineral Deposits (mining industry supported Chair) and later becoming Head of the Department of Geology.

Throughout his career, Prof. Altermann has been deeply involved in the scientific community, serving on national committees and editorial boards for international journals and as editor of books and special volumes. He was a Vice-President of the Geological Society of Africa and Chairman of the South African Committee for Stratigraphy. He retired from UP in 2019 and has since been working as a freelance geological consultant in Pretoria.

Prof. Lyons is a Distinguished Professor of Biogeochemistry in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of California-Riverside, and Director of the UCR Alternative Earths Astrobiology Center. Lyons currently leads the 'Alternative Earths' team of the NASA Astrobiology Institute and within NASA's Interdisciplinary Consortia for Astrobiology Research. He is also a co-leader of NASA's Prebiotic Chemistry and Early Earth Environments Research Coordination Network. He is a fellow of the Geological Society of America, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Geochemical Society, the European Association of Geochemistry, and the American Geophysical Union. He has been honored with visiting professorships throughout the world. He holds a B.S. from the Colorado School of Mines, an M.S. from the University of Arizona, and a Ph.D. from Yale University. His primary research interests include astrobiology, geobiology, Earth history, and the search for life beyond our solar system. Dr Richard Ernst is Scientist in Residence at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. His career has been focussed on Large Igneous Provinces (LIPs) with nearly 300 refereed publications on all aspects of LIPs: including their dramatic flood basalts, 'plumbing system' of mafic/ultramafic dykes, sills and layered intrusions, and association with carbonatites, kimberlites and silicic magmatism; links to supercontinent breakup, catastrophic environmental/climate change including mass extinction events, mineral, metal and hydrocarbon resource exploration, and planetary analogues; and characterizing the role of mantle plumes in their origin. He is the author of "Large Igneous Provinces?, Cambridge University Press (2014), a leader of the LIPs Commission of IAVCEI (since 2003), leader of the LIPs and Resource Exploration Program ("LIPs Industry Consortium?, since 2010), leader of the International Venus Research Group (IVRG) (since 2021). He received the 2022 Career Achievement Award of the Volcanology and Igneous Petrology Division (VIP) of the Geological Association of Canada, and was elected a Fellow of the Geological Society of America (2024). Prof. Heubeck is a regional "soft-rock" geologist. Originally from Germany, he completed an MSc at the University of Texas at Austin on Tertiary basins on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, followed by a PhD from Stanford University on the Barberton Greenstone Belt of South Africa and Eswatini. He worked for six years as an explorationist and development geologist for Amoco and BP in the US and Canada before joining the Free University Berlin as a faculty member. There, he conducted studies on the Ediacaran-Cambrian boundary in Kazakhstan and China and on Andean Tertiary basins in South America before taking up his interest in the Barberton Greenstone Belt again. In 2014, he moved to the FSU Jena where he holds the chair of General and Historical Geology. Most of his studies are field-based, range from the grain- to the basin-scale, and use - in collaboration with experts - whatever methods are necessary to address the problem at hand. Dr. Stueeken obtained a BSc in Geosciences & Astrophysics at Jacobs University, Germany, in 2007 and a PhD in Earth Science and Astrobiology from the University of Washington, Seattle, USA, in 2014. She is now a lecturer at the University of St Andrews and the lead PI of the gas-source stable isotope laboratory. Her research focuses on reconstructing paleoenvironments and biogeochemical cycles, using a combination of field work, geochemical analyses, experiments, and modelling. Dr. Webb received his PhD in Geology from the University of California, Los Angeles (USA) in 2007. After brief teaching and postdoctoral work there, he moved on to Assistant and then Associate Professor positions at Louisiana State University, the University of Leeds, and the University of Hong Kong, prior to joining the Freie Universitaet Berlin as Professor for Tectonics and Tectonophysics in 2024. Dr. Webb has also led short courses and field-based teaching expeditions for Nanjing University and Peking University.

His research focuses on tectonics, senso lato-from the early development of Earth and other terrestrial bodies, to million-year time-scale evolution of salt and Himalayan tectonic systems, to mm-scale active deformation characterized via satellite data. He uses geologic mapping integrated with analytical and theoretical approaches to dissect the architecture and evolution of complex tectonic systems.

Dr. Papineau has a PhD in Geological Sciences and Astrobiology from the University of Colorado at Boulder (2006) and a B.Sc. in Physics and Biochemistry from McGill University (2001) in Montreal. He has worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Carnegie Institution of Washington (2006-2010) and as an Assistant Professor at Boston College (2010-2013). He was then a Professor of Precambrian Biogeochemistry and Exobiology at the University College London (2013-2024) and also a 'Disciplinary Pioneering talent' at the China University of Geosciences in Wuhan (2017-2025). Since 2024, he has been a Senior Research Scientist in the State Key Laboratory of Deep-Sea Science and Intelligence Technology at the Institute of Deep-Sea Science and Engineering of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The overarching themes of his research are about the origin and early evolution of life on Earth and the geobiology of deep-sea environments as analogues for extra-terrestrial life. Specifically, he uses micro- to atomic-scale chemical imaging techniques to disentangle biosignatures from abiotic signatures in the Precambrian sedimentary rock record and in the oceanic abyssal and hadal zones.

Dr. Rajat Mazumder received his M.Sc in Applied Geology in 1991 from the University of Allahabad, (India) and his Ph.D from Jadavpur University (India) in 2002. He was a Post-doctoral Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) at Yokohama National University (2002-2004), Alexander Von Humboldt Foundation (2005-2006) at Munich University, Germany, and was a recipient of JSPS short-term invitation fellowship for experienced researchers in 2008. Dr. Mazumder taught Sedimentary Petrology, Mineralogy and Precambrian Stratigraphy at Asutosh College (University of Calcutta, 1999-2002), Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (2006), and was an Associate Professor of Geology at the Indian Statistical Institute (2006-2013). He was a Research Fellow at the University of New South Wales Australia (2012-2014). Currently, Dr. Mazumder is an Associate Professor at Curtin University Sarawak, Malaysia and teaches Basin Analysis and Petroleum Systems, Tectonics and Dynamic Earth and Metamorphic Petrology. Dr. Mazumder was one of the global co-leaders of UNESCO-IGCP 509 research project (2005-2009) on the Paleoproterozoic Supercontinent and global evolution. He is an advisory editor of the Journal of the Geological Society of London and an Associate Editor of Marine and Petroleum Geology. His research is mostly focused on the earth's surface processes during its early history. Paul Mason is a geologist and geochemist whose research has focused on environmental conditions on the Archean and Paleoproterozoic Earth and the links to tectonic and magmatic processes. He obtained his PhD at the University of London and is currently professor in Petrology at the University of Utrecht. His work involves fieldwork in Archean and Paleoproterozic greenstone belts and sedimentary basins with a focus on microanalytical techniques for isotopic and trace element analysis of minerals and rocks.