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Biography
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A/Professor Simon George - Biography
Simon George was awarded a BSc (Hons) degree in geology from St Andrews University in Scotland in 1985 and then worked for a short time as a mudlogger out of Aberdeen. He obtained his PhD (1990) in organic geochemistry at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne for his work on the influence of igneous activity on petroleum generation and accumulation. He commenced work with the CSIRO in Australia in 1991 and worked with them until 2006, when he was a Senior Principal Research Scientist at CSIRO Petroleum leading research into the molecular geochemistry of petroleum and petroleum source rocks. The main aim of this work was in developing organic geochemical techniques for the Australian petroleum industry. He led the organic geochemistry group (5–8 staff) at CSIRO Petroleum from 1996. He specialised in reservoir geochemistry, in particular on the development of techniques for the analysis of oil-bearing fluid inclusions trapped in reservoir sandstones. His work, together with that of his colleagues, led to CSIRO Petroleum being internationally regarded as at the forefront of the application of geochemical techniques for understanding the source, maturity and alteration history of oil trapped in fluid inclusions. In 2005 he was a seminal contributor to the CSIRO Fluid History Analysis team that won the CSIRO prize for Research Achievement in “development of an innovative suite of techniques that reveal the stepwise fill history of petroleum reservoirs in previously unseen detail, which have positioned CSIRO as the world-leader in the application of fluid inclusion-based methods for reducing risk when oil companies drill exploration wells”. Other areas of interest have been Proterozoic sediments, solid bitumens, thermal maturity markers and biodegradation. He has taken part in the development of a novel laser micropyrolysis gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer, which enables the analysis of microscopically-discernible organic matter such as microfossils, macerals and solid bitumens.
In February 2006 he left CSIRO and started as an Associate Professor at Macquarie University in northern Sydney. There he has started a new research group in organic geochemistry, which now includes 4 postgraduate students (more arriving soon), working especially on research areas to do with the geochemical record of the early evolution of life, and bioremediation in cold climates. Originally he was in the Australian Centre for Astrobiology (ACA) at Macquarie University, but after that moved to University of New South Wales (ACA), he moved into the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Macquarie University. He has various ARC, AAD and Macquarie University research grants with many collaborators. He teaches in various undergraduate units, including GEOS112 (Planet Earth); GEOS116 (Marine Geoscience); GEOS260 (Marine Depositional Environments); and he convenes and teaches GEOS204 (Life, the Universe and Everything), which includes material from the previous ELS204 and GEOS309 Astrobiology units. He also gives a 1 day Genes-to-Geoscience module for postgraduate students on “Frontiers in Biogeochemistry”.
He has been an Associate Editor of Organic Geochemistry since 1996, and has dealt with over 90 papers in that time. He was the Guest Editor of Special issues of Organic Geochemistry “Selected papers from the 1998 Australian Organic Geochemistry Conference”, and “Selected papers from the Chinese 2001 Symposium on Research and Technological Advances of Reservoir Geochemistry”. He is a regular reviewer for international journals including Organic Geochemistry, Applied Geochemistry, Geochimica Cosmochimica Acta, Chemical Geology, Petroleum Geoscience and Precambrian Research. He won best presented paper awards at the 2002 APPEA conference in Adelaide, the 2002 West Australian Basins Symposium in Perth, and the 2006 Australian Organic Geochemistry Conference at Rottnest Island. He was chairman and co-convener of the joint Australian Organic Geochemistry Conference (AOGC) and International Humic Substances Society (IHSS) Meeting, Leura, NSW, 2004. He chaired a session at the Goldschmidt 2008 conference, is chairing a session at the Goldschmidt 2009 conference, and is a member of the Scientific Committee at 24th International Meeting on Organic Geochemistry (IMOG) in Bremen, Germany, 2009. He was the chair of the Student Liaison Sub-committee of the Organising Committee for the Eastern Australasian Basins Symposium III (Sydney, 2008), and organised a programme of geoscience activities for 116 school students (years 10-12) and their teachers from 7 schools in the Sydney region. He is a member of AAPG, PESA, TSOP, EAOG and the Geochemical Society.