Research Assistant Professor
ARC Centre of Excellence for Core to Crust Fluid Systems (CCFS)
Centre for Exploration Targeting (CET)
Contact details
Address
Centre for Microscopy, Characterisation and Analysis
Physics Building Rm 1.78
School of Earth and Environment
The University of Western Australia (M010)
35 Stirling Highway
CRAWLEY WA 6009
Australia
Phone
+618 6488 8064
Email
david.wacey@uwa.edu.au
Dave Wacey has come to the CET to join the ARC Centre of Excellence ‘Crust to Core Fluid Systems’ team. His broad research interests encompass the origin of life on Earth, the refinement of criteria for assessing signs of life in the rock record, modern and ancient sulfur biochemistry, and the application of this work to the detection of extraterrestrial life. At the CET, together with Mark Barley, he will be focusing on Earth’s early sulfur cycle using high-resolution imaging and geochemical techniques including SIMS, NanoSIMS, FIB-TEM, FIB-SEM and laser Raman.
Dave grew up in England where he obtained both his degree in Earth Sciences and PhD from Oxford University. After a first postdoc at Oxford he decided it was time for a change and moved to Australia taking up a UWA Postdoctoral Research Fellowship. During this time Dave studied some of Earth’s oldest and best-preserved sedimentary rocks from Western Australia finding evidence for cellular life and sulfur-based metabolisms almost 3.5 billion years ago.
Dave returns to UWA after a brief spell at the University of Bergen, Norway, where he has enjoyed the novelty of snow again, remembered what it is like to be really cold, and initiated sulfide precipitation experiments using modern sulfur microbes as early Earth analogues!