I am a Director of Research in CNRS at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, France.

I graduated from University of Lyon in 1985, and obtained PhD in University of Rennes in 1989. I was then post-doc in University College London before being hired on a CNRS position in 1990 in Rennes.

My research area is high pressure mineral physics, with emphasis during last years on hydrous phases in subduction zones. I use high pressure apparatus, X-ray diffraction and spectroscopies to determine elastic and transport properties used to model mineralogy from geophysical observations.

I came to ERI to develop projects where I can interact with experimentalists to make new measurements, and seismologists or geophysicists to apply these measurements to modelling of geophysical data in subduction zones, especially seismic tomography and electrical conductivity structure.

During my stay in ERI, I have had the opportunity to appreciate interactions with researchers working in my field of expertise (mineral and rock physics) but also with seismologists and specialists of electrical conductivity measurements. ERI belongs to places where such interactions are easy because of the high quality of science developed here in association with top-level experiments and observational tools.

I have especially worked on two topics:

1) The nature of the lower plane of double seismic Benioff zones, its relationship with the degree of hydration of the subducted slab, and elucidation of the possible mechanisms for earthquakes in that region.

2) The electrical conductivity of hydrous phases at high pressure and temperature. We determined conductivity of various samples from different geological settings. The results will allow interpreting the conductivity structure of shallow subduction zones in combination with mineralogical models from tomographic images, and assessing the water budget in the first 200 km of subduction.

In addition to research work, I had the opportunity of giving three seminars in Todai, and six invited seminars in various universities over Japan. These were the occasion of meeting and exchanging with research staff and to develop some collaborations on the research topics developed above.

In short, this three months stay has been very enriching, both professionally and personally, through the many interactions I could develop with people at ERI. I wish to thank all scientific and administrative staff for their kindness and efficiency that made this period in Japan very enjoyable.

Bruno Reynard, Junichi Nakajima, and Hitoshi Kawakatsu (2010). Earthquakes and plastic deformation of anhydrous slab mantle in double Wadati-Benioff zones, GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 37, L24309, doi:10.1029/2010GL045494.

This article is an Editors' choice of SCIENCE. The abstract of the article is given here in Japanese.