Prof Ken McClay awarded Bruce Hobbs Medal

Congratulations to Professor Ken McClay, who has been awarded the Geological Society of Australia’s Bruce Hobbs Medal for outstanding contributions to structural geology.

Ken McClay

Professor Ken McClay receiving the Medal from Dr Rian Dutch (Geological Survey of South Australia), Chair of the Geological Society of Australia’s Specialist Group in Tectonics and Structural Geology at the recent ‘Convergence on the Coast’ conference in Port Lincoln, November 2019.

The Bruce Hobbs Medal is awarded for excellent contributions to structural geology.

Ken has been one of the world’s leading structural and economic geologists during the past 40 years with profound contributions across many structural geology and tectonics sub-disciplines.

Ken graduated with a Honours degree in Economic Geology from the University of Adelaide in 1970 (which awarded him a DSc in 2000), and following MSc and PhD degrees from Imperial College London, he spent 27 years as Professor of Structural Geology at Royal Holloway, before returning to Adelaide early in 2019 and joining the Australian School of Petroleum as an Adjunct Professor.

The overarching focus of Ken’s research has been on the development and application of modern structural geology concepts to the resources industries, initially the minerals industry, and subsequently to the international petroleum industry.  This research has principally focused on the development of quantitative scaled analogue models, field and seismic studies of extensional fault systems, thrust fault systems, inversion and strike-slip structures.

Ken, who literally wrote the book on Structural Geology field mapping, has published >190 papers in international peer-reviewed journals, successfully supervised 134 MSc and 62 PhD students and 32 postdoctoral researchers, developed dozens of field-based structural geology courses, and received >£10M in research grants from NERC and the international petroleum industry. 

Congratulations, Professor McClay!

Tagged in Latest News and Achievements, Petroleum Engineering