Dan Frost is an experimental scientist studying the nature of Earth’s deep interior and the formation processes of planets. He employs the results of high pressure and temperature experiments on mineral, rock and magma properties to interpret geochemical and geophysical observations. In particular, his research has identified key processes in the deep carbon cycle that explain the long term retention of carbon inside the Earth. By measuring mineral elastic properties at high pressures, he has placed constraints on the chemical composition of the Earth’s deepest, inaccessible layers by interpreting the velocities of earthquake waves that pass through these regions.

Dan Frost is Professor for Experimental Geosciences at the Bavarian Research Institute of Experimental Geochemistry and Geophysics (Bayerisches Geoinstitut) at the University of Bayreuth in Germany. He received his PhD in Earth Sciences from the University of Bristol and came to the Bayerisches Geoinstitut in 1997 after two years at the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Intuition of Washington in the USA. In 2016 he was a recipient of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the German Research Council.