Antonio Sebastiano Piazzoni is a PhD student at Earth Sciences Department, Munich, Germany (with Hans-Peter Bunge) and at the Bayrisches GeoInstitute, Bayreuth, Germany (with Gerd Steinle-Neumann).

His main interest is now trying to combine geodynamic models with mineral physics under different aspects. First, he works on self-consistent models of mineral physics based on Gibbs free energy minimisation able to predict stability and the physical properties of mineral phases in the mantle at a given pressure, temperature and composition. This model is coupled with a mantle convection code in order to calculate buoyancy forces and thermal expansion consistently with the occurrence of phase transitions and with non-linearity of the physical properties. So, important areas of the mantle are modeled more in details in respect to previous models, as for instance the area around 660km depth where post-spinel and garnet-to-perovskite transitions concur with opposite Clapeyron slopes and different density discontinuities. He has focused on the lowermost mantle, where many of the physical properties, and in particular their first and second order derivatives are known only upon extrapolation from lower pressure or in general are strongly approximated. He has studied the sensitivity of some sesmic observations to possible variations of these parameters within uncertainties. He finds that non-linear effects on the adiabatic bulk modulus can yield to strong variations of the temperature derivative of shear and bulk sound velocities, re-opening a scenario in which it is possible to predict the observed V$_S$/V$_\phi$ anti-correlation in a chemically uniform mantle. He has also focused on transition zone pressures, studying the incorporation of water in wadsleyite and ringwoodite and on its effects on the phsyical properties and on the thermal regime.

Before coming to Munich, Antonio received his Master degree in Physics at Università degli Studi, Milano, Italy, with a thesis (with Roberto Sabadini) on viscoelastic normal modes and sea level changes. He recently received MRP Outstanding Student Paper Award for oral presentation at the AGU 2006 Fall Meeting.