Gianreto Manatschal was born in a small, remote Rumantsch village in the south-eastern Swiss Alps. He obtained his doctorate in geology from ETH Zürich, Switzerland, in 1995. After postdoctoral training at the Danish Lithosphere Centre and ETH Zürich, he moved to Strasbourg (France), where he became full professor of tectonics at the École et Observatoire des Sciences de la Terre in 2003. His research focuses on the formation and reactivation of rifted margins and the related tectono-sedimentary and magmatic processes, the importance of inheritance, and the interplay between fluids and mineralizations in rift systems, He took part in ODP Legs 173 and 210 on the Iberian and Newfoundland margins and has worked in the Alps, the Pyrenees, the North and South Atlantic, the South China Sea and the South Australian margins. He has supervised or co-supervised 40 PhD students and 15 post-docs. He is involved in several international research projects funded by national scientific foundations and industry.