Professor Searle is Professor of Earth Sciences in the University of Oxford and is a Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford who has carried out field based geological research in the Himalaya for over 30 years. He has made numerous treks and climbs in the Annapurna region, as well as the Manaslu, Ganesh, Langtang, Everest and Makalu regions of Nepal and Tibet, and has published more than 100 scientific papers on the geology of the Himalaya, Karakoram and Tibet.