Lesley Wyborn

PhD Australian National University
Adjunct Fellow, National Computational Infrastructure Facility and Research School of Earth Sciences
ANU College of Science

Areas of expertise

  • Inorganic Geochemistry 040202
  • Global Information Systems 080606
  • Ore Deposit Petrology 040307

Research interests

I have had a career of over 42 years in the Geosciences working within the Government Research sector. In this time I have built up international level expertise in 3 areas:

  1. Geoinformatics and Computational Geoscience;
  2. Granite Geochemistry and related Metallogeny; and
  3. National Scale Mineral Systems Analysis.

I have a strong background in developing data management systems and related analytics. My focus in the last 20 years has been on developing interoperability between distributed data repositories and enabling on-line analytics. More recently I was involved in increasing the uptake of High Performance Computing and High Performance Data technologies in the Geosciences. In Geoscience Australia I was leader of GA’s move into high performance computing in partnership with the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) facility at ANU. I have worked on many NCRIS-funded projects projects that have developed sustainable infrastructure to enable online workflows across distributed compute, data and software repositories. Currently I am working on the NCI National Evironmental Research Data Interoperabilty Platform (NERDIP) and the NeCTAR Virtual Geophysics Laboratory (VGL).

 My primary field of reserach is geochemistry, in particular geochemistry of granites, ore deposits and regional alteration systems. In 1994, I was one of the early adopters to develop Mineral Systems Analysis on determining the essential ingredients of various Australian mineral systems, and in converting those parameters into mappable ingredients that can be computationally modelled as part of regional scale fluid flow analysis to help understand why ore deposits form where they form.

Biography

Education:

1972: Bachelor of Science, 1st Class Honours (Geology) – University of Sydney                    1973: Diploma of Education (Science and Mathematics) - University of Canberra
1978: Doctor of Philosophy (Geology and Geochemistry) – Australian National University                          

Awards, Invitations or Other Indicators of Peer Esteem

2019: The US Martha Maiden Lifetime Achievement for Service to the Earth Science     Information Community Award

2016: Fellow of the Geological Society of America

2015: Geological Society of America Life time carreer achievement in Geoinformatics

2014: Australian Government Public Service Medal

1999: Geoscience Australia Day Achievement Medallion

1994: Commonwealth Government Technology Silver Award.

Committee/Working Group activities:

Present:

  1. Chair, Data in Science Committee, Australian Academy of Science (from 2017)
  2. Member of the AGU Data Advisory Committee (From 2017)
  3. Member of the AGU Task Force on Diversity and Inclusion
  4. Member, Executive Committee, Earth and Space Science Informatics Section, American Geophysical Union (from 2010-2015, from 2017).

Past:

  1. Member of the AGU Earth and Space Science Fall Meeting Program Committee 2015-2018
  2. Observer, International Oceans Data Interoperability Platform Project (jointly funded by the EU INSPIRE Initiative, the NSF and the Australian National Data Service) (from 2012)
  3. Member of the Australian AuScope Reference Group which scoped the next round of investments to support new eResearch Infrastructures for the Australian Earth Science Community (from 2015-2017)
  4. Member, US National Science Foundation NSF advisory board for Marine Data and Geoinformatics for Geochemistry Groups (2006-2010)
  5. Australian Representative for International e-Geophysical Year (2006-2008)
  6. Member of the planning group for the AuScope Grid Infrastructure Investments (2006-2008)
  7. Member, Australian Research Council (ARC) Expert Advisory Panel for Physics, Chemistry and the Geosciences (2003-2005)
  8. Participated in 9 AMIRA projects as either principal researcher, adviser, expert, coordinator or collaborator (1989-2003).

 

Researcher's projects

B. Evans, L. Wyborn, T. Pugh. C.Allen, J. Antony, K. Gohar, D. Porter, J. Smillie, C. Trenham, J. Wang, A. Ip, G. Bell, 2015. “The NCI High Performance Computing and High Performance Data Platform to Support theAnalysis of Petascale Environmental Data Collections” in Environmental Software Systems, Infrastructures, Services, Applications, I R. Denzer, R.M. Argent, G Schinak, J.Hrebicek, Eds., FIP AICT 448, pp. 569–577, 2015. http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319159935.


Wang, J., Evans, B., Bastrakova, I., Kemp,C.,   Fraser, R., Wyborn, L., 2015. Bringing Australian Geophysical Data onto a High Performance Data Node at the National Computational Infrastructure. AAPG/SEG International Conference and Exhibition 2015, Melbourne, Australia. http://www.searchanddiscovery.com/pdfz/documents/2016/70210wang/ndx_wang.pdf.html


Wyborn, L., and Evans, B., 2015. Integrating ‘Big’ Geoscience Data into the NCI Petascale National Environmental Research Interoperability Platform (NERDIP): successes and unforseen challenges. IEEE Big Data Conference 2015 Workshop on Big Data in the Geosciences. Santa Clara, California. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/BigData.2015.7363981

Publications

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Updated:  28 March 2024 / Responsible Officer:  Director (Research Services Division) / Page Contact:  Researchers