Geologist · Senior Scientist, Paris Lodron University Salzburg
I study how mountain belts are built and how tectonic, climatic and deep geodynamic processes interact to shape landscapes, quantifying rock uplift and exhumation with low-temperature thermochronology, thermokinetic modelling and structural geology.
Schematic cross-section of the Calabrian Arc, not to scale.
I am a Senior Scientist in the Division of Geology and Physical Geography, Department of Environment and Biodiversity, at Paris Lodron University Salzburg, where I also completed my PhD.
I trained as a geologist in Colombia and hold an MSc in Geology from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, with a thesis on the exhumation history of the Bucaramanga Fault based on low-temperature thermochronology. Before moving to Salzburg I worked with the Servicio Geológico Colombiano.
My work combines field-based structural geology with thermochronological dating and numerical modelling, in close collaboration with research groups across Europe and South America.
Calabria sits above a retreating, tearing subduction slab and is rising rapidly. In the ThermoCalabria project I combine thermochronology with short-term uplift and landscape analysis to determine how slab length, slab tearing and deep-seated faults control exhumation across the arc.
I study how deep-seated crustal faults, such as the Bucaramanga Fault system, exhume deep crustal rocks and transmit signals from the subduction zone into the continental interior, coupling fission-track data with meso- and microstructural analysis.
Why do old mountain belts such as the Black Forest and the Vosges still carry young relief? I investigate the styles and drivers of late Cenozoic uplift and exhumation across the European Variscan belt.
Dating single apatite and zircon crystals, I reconstruct when rocks cooled through the shallow crust, and use thermal and mechanical models to turn those cooling ages into rates of uplift and erosion.
Each system records when a rock cooled below its approximate closure temperature. Together they track a rock's path toward the surface. Depths assume a typical geothermal gradient of about 25 °C/km.
Years are coloured like a stratigraphic column: 2026 2025 2024 2019
Complete list on ORCID and ResearchGate.
Fault mapping, stress analysis with Mohr circles and laboratory work on rock samples, assessed through student lab reports.
Tectonics of sedimentary basins, sedimentology and paleontology, and exhumation from thermochronology, including geo-bio interactions. Each session pairs a lecture with a hands-on lab.
Division of Geology and Physical Geography
Department of Environment and Biodiversity
Paris Lodron University Salzburg, Austria