Gregor Paul Eberli

Professor and Robert N. Ginsburg Endowed Chair in Marine Geosciences, Department of Marine Geosciences - Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science

Gregor Eberli has spent much of his science career exploring the earth’s sediments as recorders of environmental changes. A native of Switzerland, Eberli received his doctorate from Swiss Institute of Technology (ETH) Zürich in 1985. A grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation allowed him to pursue postdoctoral studies with Robert N. Ginsburg at the Comparative Sedimentology Laboratory at the University of Miami. He returned to the ETH in 1987 to work on a project in the Abruzzi Alps in Italy. In 1991 he joined the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science as an associate professor and has been working there ever since. In 1996, he became the Director of the CSL-Center for Carbonate Research, and in 2020, he was named the Robert N. Ginsburg Endowed Chair in Marine Geosciences.

Eberli is a leading researcher in various aspects of the sedimentary geology and geophysics of carbonates. Results from his research have played a key role in assessing the sedimentary record of sea level fluctuations and climate changes. He is recognized for revealing the complicated internal architecture of Great Bahama Bank and changing the view of the growth pattern of such carbonate platforms. His analysis of the seismic stratigraphy of Great Bahama Bank sparked two scientific drilling campaigns that helped establish carbonates as truthful recorders of sea level changes. He has twice been a proponent and later co-chief scientist of expeditions of the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP). Results from the 2015­­ IODP expedition to the Maldives established the onset of the strong modern Indian monsoon system at 13 million years before present.

He studies the deep ocean basin surrounding the carbonate platforms with the goal to unravel the history of the ocean currents, in particular the onset of the modern ocean circulation including the Gulf Stream. The current swept seaways in the Bahamas are provinces of extensive cold-water coral reefs that are more numerous and widespread than their shallow-water counterparts. Together with colleagues, Eberli has mapped and sampled these hotspots of deep-water biodiversity. Modern molecular techniques have allowed his team to assess the importance of microbial organisms on the production of ooids and the transformation from carbonate sediment to limestone rock.

In his laboratory, he has conducted several successful petrophysical experiments that help to better understand the log and seismic signature of carbonates. His team is a leader in explaining how the complicated pore structure in carbonates influences acoustic wave propagation and electrical resistivity.

Throughout his career, Eberli has received several prestigious awards. He is a “Fellow of the Geological Society of America” and a “Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)”. He was an AAPG Distinguished Lecturer in 1996/97, JOI/USSAC Distinguished, Lecturer in 1997/1998, and an EAGE Distinguished Lecturer in 2005 and 2006.  In 2012 he was honored with the “Johannes Walther Award” from the International Association of Sedimentology for Scientific Contributions to Sedimentology. In 2014 he received the “Grover E. Murray Memorial Distinguished Educator Award” from the American Association of Petroleum Geology.