The recipient of the 2025 Research Excellence Award of the European Mineralogical Union is
Prof. Alberto Vitale Brovarone from the University of Bologna (Italy).

Right from the start, Alberto Vitale Brovarone has taken advantages of European possibilities in mineralogy by doing his PhD (2011) at both the University of Torino (Italy) and University of Montpellier (France) on the study of high-pressure terranes in Alpine Corsica.

His research has focused on the structural evolutions of orogens, in particular their high-pressure minerals such as lawsonite, and the deep and various forms of carbon and how to use this as petrogenetic tracer. He settled in France for two postdocs and was then hired by CNRS in 2014 in Paris. His research has diversified toward carbon and hydrogen interactions and complex rock-aqueous fluid reactions. He returned to Italy in 2018, where he demonstrated abiotic hydrocarbon production during serpentinization in subduction zones (ERC-CoG grant). He became a full professor in 2020 in Bologna.

Alberto Vitale Brovarone has built successfully interdisciplinary collaborations at European scales, bridging field geology, mineralogy, metamorphic petrology and geochemistry and now biomineralogy. He was a councilor at the European Association for Geochemistry and is a current member of the editorial board of Lithos. He also appeared in numerous Italian media and regularly participates in science festivals for the general public.

Alberto Vitale Brovarone is an outstandingly petro-mineralogist, who will continue to rejuvenate the tradition of field geology and to combine it with modern technologies dedicated to investigation of subduction zones and the storage and cycling of C, H and unconventional abiotic hydrocarbons. For the major impact of his numerous achievements, Alberto Brovarone is truly worthy to receive the EMU Medal for Research Excellence 2025.