I was born in Armidale, NSW, Australia. I completed my undergraduate and MS degrees at the Australian National University. My PhD research was carried out under the supervision of Prof. David Veblen at Johns Hopkins University (1990). I spent 11.5 years as an Assistant, Associate, and Full Professor at UW Madison (1990 - 2001).  However, I was on leave of absence for two of these years (1996 - 1998) while I was employed as an Associate and Full Professor in the Mineralogical Institute at The University of Tokyo.  In 2002 I moved to the University of California Berkeley, where I am now a Professor in the Departments of Earth and Planetary Science and Environmental Science, Policy, and Management.  I am in the geochemistry group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.