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Andrew D. Miall
Professor
University of Toronto
Department of Earth Sciences
22 Russell Street, Toronto
Ontario, Canada M5S 3B1
Tel.: 416 978 8841
Mobile: 647-588-6562
Fax.: 416 978 3938
e-mail:miall@es.utoronto.ca
Andrew Miall has been Professor of Geology at the Geology Department, University of Toronto since 1979. He is the inaugural holder of the Gordon Stollery Chair in Basin Analysis and Petroleum Geology at the University of Toronto, which was founded in 2001. Since 2003, Andrew Miall has worked at the intersection between energy and the environment. In the fall of 2010, he was selected by the federal Environment Minister, the Honorable James Prentice, to serve on a committee of six Canadian scientists enjoined with the task of improving environmental oversight and management of the Canadian oil sands. This committee submitted its report in December, 2010. In January 2011, Dr. Miall was appointed by the Environment Minister of Alberta, the Honorable Rob Renner, to the Alberta Environmental Monitoring Panel, tasked with making recommendations for a complete overhaul of Alberta's environmental monitoring work, with an initial focus on the Oil Sands. The final report was delivered to Minister Renner on June 30th, 2011. In both cases, the objective of these committees was to develop world-class environmental monitoring and reporting practices, aimed at improving the management of air and water pollution, as industrial development activity in the oil sands increases in the coming decades.
From 2000-2004 Andrew Miall served as Canada’s representative to the NATO Science and the Environment “Committee on the Challenges of Modern Society.” He was Vice President of the Academy of Science of the Royal Society of Canada from 2005 to 2007 and President of the Academy from 2007-2009. Miall chaired the Program Committees which organized the Royal Society of Canada Annual Symposia on energy in 2003 and on water in 2006, and in 2009 he chaired the RSC Committee that held a one-day symposium in October to celebrate the International year of Astronomy, entitled "The universe and our place in it." Andrew Miall also serves as a panelist on symposia in the Program on Water Issues at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto on such topics as carbon sequestration, shale gas and Canada’s oil sands.
At the University of Toronto Miall focuses on teaching and research in the study of sedimentary basins, with a particular interest in sequence stratigraphy, and in the sedimentology of nonmarine sandstones, and their value as reservoir rocks for oil and gas. Reflecting his broader interest in energy and climate-change issues, since 1998 Miall has taught a popular science-for-non-scientists course at the University of Toronto entitled “Geology in Public Issues”, which deals with geological hazards, energy and water resources, and global change. The lavishly illustrated book “Canada Rocks: The Geologic Journey”, authored by N. Eyles and A. D. Miall, appeared in the fall of 2007. This is the first treatment of the geological history of Canada prepared for a general readership.
Andrew Miall was born and educated in Brighton, England, and completed his B.Sc. in Geology at the University of London in 1965. He emigrated to Canada in that year and joined the graduate research program in Arctic geology at University of Ottawa, gaining a Ph.D. from this work in 1969. He worked for several companies in Calgary and then joined the Geological Survey of Canada in Calgary in 1972 as a Research Scientist in the Arctic Islands section, working on a wide variety of regional basin studies. In 1977 he chaired the First International Symposium on Fluvial Sedimentology in Calgary, an initiative sponsored by the Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists and which established a new theme of basic research endeavours carried forward by this major national society. Miall completed his Arctic work in the early 1980s after moving to Toronto, and has subsequently focused on field-based research in the Colorado Plateau area of the United States, together with projects in Asia and Australia.
Miall was Editor of the national Canadian journal Geoscience Canada from 1982 to 1989, and was Co-Chief Editor of the Elsevier journal Sedimentary Geology from 1987 to 2005. He is currently serving as the Sedimentology editor for Earth Science Reviews. He is the author of the book "Principles of Sedimentary Basin Analysis", a research-level synthesis, now in its third edition. A second book, "The geology of fluvial deposits: sedimentary facies, basin analysis and petroleum geology" was published in April 1996. A third book "The geology of stratigraphic sequences" appeared in the fall of 1996. A revised second edition was published in May 2010. His new book, “Fluvial depositional systems” appeared in the Fall of 2013.
Miall has been the editor of four technical books, plus many research papers. He was a Distinguished Lecturer for the American Association of Petroleum Geologists in 1986-1987. In 1992 he was named the Earth Resources Foundation-Esso Australia Distinguished Lecturer for that year by the Earth Resources Foundation of the University of Sydney, and toured Australia. He has also been a guest lecturer of the Academy of Science, China (1985), the Geological Society of South Africa (1979), and the Academy of Sciences, Poland (1978), a Visiting Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (1990), a Visiting Professor at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada (1977), a sabbatical-leave visitor at University of Oxford, U. K. (1991-1992), and the Boyd Lecturer in Petroleum Exploration at the University of Texas, Austin (1995). He has lectured widely throughout Canada and the United States, and has also lectured, presented technology-transfer courses to petroleum-industry groups and undertaken consulting work in Venezuela, Thailand, Malaysia, Japan, and New Zealand. He has been a regular short-course instructor for the Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists in Calgary since 2000.
Andrew Miall was awarded the Past President’s Medal of the Geological Association of Canada in 1983 and became a Distinguished Fellow of that society in 1995. In 1992 he was awarded the D.Sc. degree, a Higher Doctorate, from the University of London. He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Sciences of the Royal Society of Canada in 1995, and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Pretoria, South Africa, in March 2001. In 2004 he received the American Association of Petroleum Geologists Grover E. Murray Distinguished Educator Award. He was inducted as an Honorary Member of the Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists in 2012 and was the 2014 recipient of the Francis J. Pettijohn Medal for Sedimentology (Society for Sedimentary Geology, Tulsa, Oklahoma), and the 2014 recipient of the Logan Medal of the Geological Association of Canada.
Andrew is married to Charlene Miall, Professor of Sociology at McMaster University, with whom he is working on a project to investigate the evolution of the earth-sciences in Canada, with particular reference to environmental issues, such as global change. They have two adult children, Christopher Miall (partner: Natalie Miall), and Sarah Kohlsmith (partner: Brad Kohlsmith).