The existence of plate tectonics has been accepted for over fifty years, but much remains to be discovered about the inner "engine" that drives it, and about the evolution of the earth and rocky planets over geological time. As the deep interior of these planets is not directly accessible, this requires a multi-disciplinary approach that combines information from different earth science specialties.

In the first series of courses, the dynamic processes that drive the earth's core, its deep mantle and the lithosphere-asthenosphere system were addressed. A series of courses was devoted to the planets and rocky objects of the solar system. More recently, the whole range of deformation processes in the mantle has been studied. Recent results on the seismogenesis of giant earthquakes and deep earthquakes were also presented.

For the final series of courses in this Chair, state-of-the-art deep earth seismic imaging techniques will be presented.