Rate My Professor David Ellis

Professor David Ellis is an Emeritus Professor in the Research School of Earth Sciences at the Australian National University. He holds an MSc from the University of Melbourne and a PhD from the University of Tasmania. His research specializations include metamorphism and ultra-metamorphism, experimental petrology, high pressure-temperature experimental studies of mineral equilibria and partial melting with application to the deep crust, and petrological studies of regional metamorphism especially in the deep continental crust. Ellis and his students have worked in Antarctica, Central Australia, Broken Hill district, Sri Lanka, Norway, and China, with emphasis on mineral equilibria and inferred tectonic settings of metamorphism.

His interests further extend to the timing of zircon growth and resorption during regional metamorphism, in particular the trace element budget in common silicates and oxides and the effect this plays in zircon resorption/growth, geochemical studies of felsic igneous rocks produced under a variety of melting conditions from water saturated migmatites up to vapor-absent pigeonite-bearing high-T "charnockitic" melts and their extrusive equivalents, and ultra-high pressure blueschist-eclogites from western China. Professor Ellis is a member of the Experimental Petrology group, visitor and affiliate at the Research School of Earth Sciences, professor in the ANU College of Science, and researcher in the Earth systems group of the ANU Institute for Climate, Energy & Disaster Solutions. He has numerous key publications, including Troitzsch and Ellis, "The ZrO2-TiO2 phase diagram" (Journal of Materials Science, 2005); Tomkins, Williams, and Ellis, "In situ U-Pb dating of zircon formed from retrograde garnet breakdown during decompression in Rogaland, SW Norway" (Journal of Metamorphic Geology, 2005); Zhang et al., "Ultrahigh-pressure metamorphism in western Tianshan, China: Part I" and "Part II" (American Mineralogist, 2002); Lee, Williams, and Ellis, "Pb, U and Th Diffusion in Natural Zircon" (Nature, 1997); and others on synthesis, stability, and petrogenesis.