Jon Mosar

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Jon Mosar is a Swiss geologist and academic who serves as a Professor of Tectonics and Geodynamics in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. His work focuses on how mountain belts form and deform, using field studies, laboratory analogs, and computer modeling to understand tectonics, structural geology, plate tectonics, faulting, and how surface processes interact with deep Earth dynamics.

Education and training
- Early education in Luxembourg (1978 certificate in sciences; 1979 certificate in sciences)
- Studied in France at Louis Pasteur University: Master of Earth Sciences (1982) and a DEA in geology (1983)
- Doctorate in structural geology (1987)
- Postdoctoral work at Princeton University (1988–1990) and at the University of Lausanne (1990–1993, 1990–1998)
- Worked at the Geological Survey of Norway (1998–2002)
- Earned Venia Legendi and habilitation at the University of Fribourg (2003); professor there since 2011

Career and leadership
- Held senior academic positions in Lausanne and later Norway before moving to Fribourg
- Led the European Center for Geodynamics and Seismology (ECGS) council (2002–2011); served as ECGS president (2008–2011)
- Member of the Swiss Academy of Sciences Geological Commission (2009–2023); vice president (2017–2023); president since 2024

Research focus
- Evolution of mountain belts, foreland basins, and passive margins
- Alpine tectonics (including the Swiss Molasse Basin and the Briançonnais domain) and the Greater Caucasus
- Mechanisms of subduction, obduction, and collision; rifting and inversion of basins
- Use of exploration geophysics, analogue modeling, and numerical simulations to study rock deformation and crustal processes
- Work on the 4-D evolution of Europe’s orogens and on natural hazards linked to tectonics

Selected works
- Subduction and obduction processes in the Swiss Alps
- Greenland–Norway separation: a geodynamic North Atlantic model
- Reconstructions of continents around the North Atlantic at the 60th parallel
- Interactions between tectonics, erosion, and sedimentation during Alpine evolution
- Studies on the Greater Caucasus and the Alpine foreland belt using analogue and numerical methods

Jon Mosar is also known for his outreach in media and for his role in advancing European geoscience research and collaboration.