The landscapes around us reflect a long history of geological events, reaching deeper under your feet and further back in time than you can imagine. For us to truly understand our world, we need to understand the scale and power of its history, as well as the processes that have shaped the lands we depend on and the resources that they hold. Most importantly, we need to find the critical metals and materials needed to meet humanity's greatest challenge, climate change. To delve into the Earth's history, Dr Helen McFarlane studies rocks and landscapes around Australia and the world, pulling together information about their surface distribution and their geometries at depth. She integrates data about the minerals, rock chemistry and geophysics, reflecting different physical properties of the rocks, to hunt for signals and characteristics of the geological formations and faults that might hold metals, like nickel and copper, needed for the energy transition.

Helen received her PhD in Geology from Monash University (Australia) and the University of Toulouse (France) in 2018. She is the Chair of Geoconferences, an earth science education promoter. Helen is currently the Group Leader of Multidimensional Geoscience at CSIRO in the Discovery Program.