Rate My Professor William Defliese

Dr. William Defliese is a Senior Lecturer in Geochemistry in the School of the Environment within the Faculty of Science at the University of Queensland. He holds a B.A. in Geological Sciences and Integrated Sciences (Honors) from Northwestern University (2008) and a Ph.D. in Geology from the University of Michigan (2014). Following his doctorate, he served as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles (2014-2017) and as Berg-Hughes Postdoctoral Fellow at Texas A&M University (2017-2019). He joined the University of Queensland as Lecturer in Geochemistry in 2019 and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2025. Defliese leads the Carbonate Research and Geochemistry group at UQ, which features facilities for sample petrology, controlled carbonate precipitation, and geochemical analysis. He also serves on the Science Committee of ANZIC, the Australian and New Zealand branch of the International Ocean Discovery Program and International Continental Scientific Drilling Program.

Defliese specializes in sedimentary geochemistry, focusing on sedimentary geology, paleoclimate reconstruction, and basin analysis using petrology, elemental geochemistry, and stable isotope techniques, particularly clumped isotopes. His research investigates clumped isotope reordering kinetics in carbonates for paleothermometry accuracy and basin heat flow modeling, including applications to burial diagenesis and sediment-hosted ore deposits. Additional areas include carbonate sedimentation and diagenesis, such as the geological history of the Great Barrier Reef, and halogens in sediments and carbonates as paleoenvironmental proxies via combustion ion chromatography. Paleoclimate projects span Holocene climate variability and ENSO, Cenozoic Southern Ocean paleoclimatology, and Neoproterozoic Snowball Earth events. Key publications include 'Carbonate clumped isotope analysis (Δ47) of 21 carbonate standards determined via gas-source isotope-ratio mass spectrometry on four instrumental configurations using carbonate-based standardization and multiyear data sets' (2021, Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry), 'Clumped and oxygen isotopes reveal differential disequilibrium in the formation of carbonates from marine methane seeps' (2021, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta), 'The impact of Snowball Earth glaciation on ocean water δ18O values' (2021, Earth and Planetary Science Letters), 'Density functional theory and ab initio molecular dynamics reveal atomistic mechanisms for carbonate clumped isotope reordering' (2023, Science Advances), and 'Late-Holocene climate change and cultural evolution in Northwest India' (2025, Quaternary Science Reviews).