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PhD student chosen for 2003 Fresh Scientists initiative

Gideon Rosenbaum, a PhD student from the School of Geosciences, has recently been selected to present his research to the media, public and students at the Fresh Science conference. Gideon was one of sixteen young scientists from Australia to participate in this event, which was held at the Melbourne Museum as part of the National Science week.
Gideon's presentation, titled "Migration of Mediterranean Mountain Ranges", is an outcome of his PhD thesis, dealing with the tectonic reconstruction of the Alpine belt in the western Mediterranean region.

The research showed that large horizontal movements, in excess of hundreds of kilometres, occurred in the Mediterranean region. Gideon says that during the geological history, these horizontal movements were the primary cause for mountain building processes. Nevertheless, they were not related to the movement of the large tectonic plates. "It shows that plate tectonics is obviously not sufficient to account for the origin of mountain belts", says Gideon.

"What I was mostly proud about", says Gideon, "is that I managed to bring geology to the same platform along with highly topical issues, such as breast cancer or diabetes".