Faculty Representative Benoit Taisne joined the Earth Observatory of Singapore (EOS) in 2012 as a Principal Investigator within the volcano group and the Asian School of the Environment (ASE) at Nanyang Technological University as Assistant Professor.
Benoit was educated in France where he received his BSc and MSc degrees in earth sciences at the University Pierre et Marie Curie and the École Normale Supérieure de Paris in 2004. He also holds an MSc in geophysics from the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, where he obtained his PhD in 2008. Prior to moving to Singapore, he was a post-doctoral researcher at the Montserrat Volcano Observatory and at the seismological laboratory of the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris.
More recently Benoit received the 2018 Nanyang Education Award (School) and the 2020 Nanyang Education Award (College) presented in the highest recognition of his teaching contributions to the University. At the EOS and ASE, he has supervised or co-supervised 25 undergraduate and postgraduate students. He has published 37 papers in peer-reviewed journals and was a guest editor of parts I and II of the special volumes, “Volumes, Timescales, and Frequency of Magmatic Processes in the Earth’s Lithosphere” published by Frontiers.
Broadly speaking, Benoit is primarily interested in magmatic processes from depth to the atmosphere, with the aim of understanding and integrating the external and internal mechanisms that control the dynamics of magmatic systems. His current research interests include monitoring volcanoes and real-time processing, analogue experiments, and infrasound, with a focus on the volcanoes of Southeast Asia.
Within the ASE, Benoit established the magma transport and infrasound laboratories. He set up the very first infrasound-based monitoring network in Singapore and is collaborating with colleagues in and around Southeast Asia to develop infrasound capability in the region in order to further improve the potential to detect and characterise explosive volcanic eruptions.