Rate My Professor Nathan Daczko

Professor Nathan Daczko serves in the School of Natural Sciences at Macquarie University, where he is affiliated with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Core to Crust Fluid Systems. He holds a BSc in Computer Science and a PhD in Geology from the University of Sydney, with his doctoral research from 1998 to 2001 focusing on the Cretaceous high-P granulites of Fiordland, New Zealand. After completing his PhD, Daczko was a Palisades Geophysical Institute Fellow at the Institute for Geophysics and William Stamps Farish Fellow at the Department of Geological Sciences, University of Texas at Austin, from 2001 to 2003, conducting postdoctoral research on the structural evolution of the Australian-Pacific plate boundary near Macquarie Island. He joined Macquarie University in 2003 as a Lecturer in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, progressing to Senior Lecturer in 2006 and Associate Professor in 2011, while holding the position of Professor.

Daczko is a metamorphic petrologist who integrates field and laboratory approaches to study metamorphic processes from microstructural scales to the evolution of large orogens. His investigations provide insights into geodynamic and metasomatic processes shaping crustal evolution, with a current emphasis on microstructural and microchemical changes during melt-rock interaction. This includes high-pressure and high-temperature experiments and field studies of lower crustal plumbing systems in magmatic arcs, such as Fiordland, New Zealand, as well as intracontinental orogens in Central Australia, extensional settings in the New England Orogen, the Ivrea-Verbano Zone in the Italian Alps, and oceanic core complexes like Atlantis Bank on the Southwest Indian Ridge. Notable publications include 'Melt-present deformation at the Entia Dome, Central Australia: A metamorphic core complex formed during lower crustal extrusion' (Lithos, 2023), 'Open system reaction between melt and gabbroic rock in the Finero Mafic Complex' (Lithos, 2023), 'Recognition of melferite – A rock formed in syn-deformational high-strain melt-transfer zones through sub-solidus rocks: A review and synthesis of microstructural criteria' (Lithos, 2022), and 'Trapped K-feldspar phenocrysts as a signature of melt migration pathways within active high-strain zones' (Journal of Metamorphic Geology, 2022). He has earned prestigious awards such as the Vice-Chancellor's Learning and Teaching Educational Leader Award (2022), Faculty of Science and Engineering Excellence in Learning Innovation and Inter-Departmental Collaboration Award (2021), Stillwell Award (2020), E.S. Hills Medal (2010), and Powell Medal (2003). Daczko chaired the Specialist Group in Tectonics and Structural Geology from 2007 to 2010 and remains active in professional organizations including the Geological Society of Australia.