Jean L. M. F. Braun

Jean Braun is Professeur de Géodynamqieu at the Université Joseph Fourier de Grenoble which he joined in 2009 after holding a similar chair at the Université de Rennes 1 for a period of five years. Before that, he was Professor at the Austraian National University which he left in late 2004. He joined the Research School of Earth Sciences at the ANU as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in 1989, upon completion of his Ph.D. in Oceanography and Geophysics at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.  His undergraduate studies in Physics were conducted at the University of Liège, Belgium.  Dr. Braun was on the Executive Committee of the Specialist Group on Solid Earth Geophysics (Australian Geological Society).  He is a past member of the National Committee for Solid Earth Sciences of the Australian Academy of Science.  He is also a past member of the Geodynamics and Tectonophysics Commission of the International Association of Seismology and Physics of the Earth Interior (IASPEI).

His research interests include:

• Extensional tectonics: dynamics of continental rifting, including the relationship between rift flank uplifts and the breakup unconformity, the formation of offset rift basins, post-extensional mantle healing and extension of previously thickened lithosphere; at a smaller scale, hanging wall deformation by movement along a listric normal fault using numerical and analog models.
• Compressional tectonics: strain partitioning at obliquely convergent plate margins, intra-continental lithospheric compression, tectonic evolution of active plate margins (east coast of Australia and South Island, New Zealand).
• Landscape evolution: study of landform evolution by combined fluvial, hill-slope and glacial processes in a variety of tectonic environments, karst initiation and evolution, escarpment retreat dynamics, constraining landscape evolution models using geomorphic and geochronologic datasets.
• Geochronology: quantitative thermal modelling of the crust in tectonically active areas coupled with Ar-Ar, K-Ar, fission-track and ESR thermochronology to obtain accurate estimates of rates of tectonic movements, time of onset/end of tectonic activity.
• Continental tectonics: intracratonic continental deformation driven by plate boundary forces, kinematic and dynamic models of continental deformation using thin plate theory.
• Rock rheology: strain localization by grain-size reduction and transition to diffusion creep in olivine-rich rocks; application of complex rheologies to tectonic processes.
• Fluid flow in fractured media: modelling of fluid flow in a fracture, porous material with application to mineralization around a network of faults at a range of scales.
• Mathematical methods: development of novel numerical and geometrical methods to solve efficiently and accurately geophysical and geological problems; these include new discretization and interpolation methods used to analyze and display geophysical datasets and solve complex partial differential equations.