Plate tectonics shapes our planet: it causes earthquakes, builds mountains, and recycles the Earth's crust over Billions of years. But how it all gets started remains one of the deepest unsolved mysteries in the Geosciences.
Subduction, where one tectonic plate dives beneath another, is the engine of this system. Yet why and how subduction begins is still not fully understood. Fabio approaches this question through global-scale computer modelling and a community-wide synthesis of evidence. To unite knowledge scattered across disciplines, he assembled an open-minded team of early-career scientists to build the SZIdatabase.org, a community-driven open-access database.
When, how, and why do subduction zones start to allow for plate tectonics on planets like the Earth, …and when do they not?
Dr. Fabio Crameri is a geoscientist, graphic designer, and science communicator. With a PhD in Geophysics from ETH Zurich, his background is in Geophysics, where he worked on global-scale dynamics of the Earth and other planetary bodies between 2013–2020. He developed numerical models, post-processing tools, and concepts like „Ocean-plate tectonics“. Fabio collaborated with experts to build the transdisciplinary Subduction Zone Initiation (SZI) Database and created the academic profile „ProAc“.
Fabio also promotes accurate and inclusive science visuals through the open-access graphics collection s-ink.org, designed the „Scientific color maps“, and advocated for methodological changes in academia related to graphic design. Since 2020, he founded Undertone.design for academic graphic design and joined the International Space Science Institute (ISSI) as Communication Scientist.