Advent of Complex Life

Roger Summons
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
42-44 Carleton Street
Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
Tel.: 61 7-452-2791
Fax: 617-253-8630
E-mail: rsummons at mit dot edu
Video Biography

Roger Summons is Professor of Geobiology in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to taking up that appointment in 2001 he was at the Australian Geological Survey Organisation, formerly known as the Bureau of Mineral Resources, Geology and Geophysics in Canberra. Over a period of 18 years at AGSO and BMR he was a member, then leader, of a research team studying the distinctive nature and habitat of Australian petroleum systems and the evolution of the biogeochemical carbon cycle.
At MIT his research group studies the co-evolution of Earth's early biota with their environment, biological extinction events and the origins of fossil fuels. Professor Summons was awarded BSc (1969) and PhD (1972) degrees in Chemistry from the University of NSW. He also undertook postdoctoral research in the Genetics Department at Stanford University and in the Research Schools of Chemistry and Biological Sciences at the Australian National University, Canberra. He was elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 1998, Fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 2006, Fellow of the Royal Society in 2008 and is author or co-author of more than 200 research papers in organic chemistry, geochemistry and geomicrobiology.

Roger Summons' Research Group Web site

Materials

Research proposal: "Studies of potential metazoan biomarkers and environmental change during the metazoan radiation" (PDF)