Emiliano Mutti


Emiliano Mutti is a geologist and sedimentologist who has made significant contributions to petroleum geosciences, especially to sedimentary dynamics of turbidites and their reservoir characterisation. He was a professor at University of Parma for 25 years and served as the chair for the geology department. He previously worked at the University of Milan, University of Turin, and University of Ferrara, as well as for companies including Esso and YPF.

Biography

Mutti was born in 1933 in Gozzano near Lake Orta, where his parents, Ido and Natalina, had settled temporarily for work. His father was the first person to graduate in industrial chemistry in Italy. Mutti also has a sister, Alba. After his birth, the family moved to Milan, where they remained for Mutti's primary and secondary education. After Milan was bombed in 1942, they moved to the small town Nociveglia, Bedonia, where their ancestors had lived since at least the 19th century. In the Northern Apennines, Mutti was surrounded by rocks and trees, sparking his love for the outdoors. He later returned to the valley to study the turbidites and deep-water depositional systems.
Mutti spent three years in medical school at his father's urging, eventually leaving the field to pursue geology. After the death of his father, Mutti spent a year working as a sales technician for Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company before receiving a scholarship to attend University of Milan. He received his master's degree in geological sciences in 1959 with a thesis on the stratigraphy and structure of Tertiary Macigno turbidites in the Northern Apennines. He remained at the institution as an assistant professor of sedimentology from 1960 to 1965. In 1965, he received a scholarship from NATO to study at the University of Utrecht, after which he was recruited by Esso to work in their production lab in Bordeaux. There, he met American geologist C. V. "Chuck" Campbell, who took him to the United States for further geological study. They did extensive field research there, as well as in Italy, Greece, Argentina, and Indonesia. Mutti still considers Campbell his main mentor, one who "transformed as a professional."
In 1969, Mutti left Esso to become an associate professor of sedimentology at the University of Turin. In 1971, he earned his PhD with a thesis on cartography, sedimentology, and stratigraphy in the Isle of Rhodes. In 1975, he became a full professor at Turin. During his time there, he began conducting research in the south tertiary pyrenean basin in the Spanish Pyrenees. In 1972, he and Franco Ricci Lucchi published the article Le turbidity dell'Apenino Settentrionale: introduzione all'analisi di faces in the Proceedings of the Italian Geological Society. This was quickly translated by a US Geological Service researcher, Tor H. Nilsen, for the International Geology Review. Several years later, in 1978, the translation was republished as a report by the American Geological Institute. Mutti left Turin in 1979 and spent a few years as a full professor of geology at University of Ferrara. In the 1980s, he began working as a consultant for YPF in Argentina, particularly in the Neuquén Basin. In 1982, he accepted a position as professor of geology at the University of Parma, where he remained until retiring in 2007. At the time of his retirement, he was chair of Parma's geology department.
Since 1989, his work has focused on stratigraphy and facies analysis of flood-dominated fluvio-deltaic deposits and their relationships to turbidite systems in many tectonically mobile basins worldwide. Between 1989 and 1998, he organised and led a field course in Argentina titled "Turbidite systems and facies and their relations to depositional sequences" for AAPG. In 1994, he and Henry W. Posamentier organised the second High-resolution Sequence Stratigraphy Conference. His "study of deep-water clastics on present-day continental margins by reflection seismic, led to comprehensive models of clastic sedimentary systems that became the first predictive models for subsurface geologists. turbidite system model... the methodology of how the model was constructed, is today widely used. Petroleum exploration companies have applied his model with great success." As of 2016, he was working with the Brazilian company Petrobras.
During his academic career, Mutti supervised 49 undergraduate theses, 19 doctoral theses, and 22 research fellowships. He also sat on a number of professional and academic boards, including as National Coordinator of the Sedimentology Group for the Consiglio Nazionale della Ricerca ; member of the Stratigraphy and Cartography Commission of the Consiglio Nazionale della Ricerca ; Principal Coordinator and Head of the MURST Project on sedimentary basin analysis; member of the scientific committee of the Eni Prize; and Vice President of the International Association of Sedimentologists and concurrently a member of its editorial board. Mutti is known for carrying a sketchpad and camera into the field to create images and diagrams of what he encounters. These have been included in a number of his articles and books.

Personal life

Mutti met his wife Edda Pasquali in Bobbio while working on his master's thesis. The couple have two children, Maria and Luigi, and live in a house in Nociveglia that Mutti's grandfather built around 1850. In addition to his native tongue, Mutti is fluent in English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese.

Selected publications

He has written over 100 scientific papers and books on sedimentology, stratigraphy, and turbidite systems.
;Articles
;Books
*