Axel is Professor at Curtin University’s John de Laeter Centre, where he has worked since 2023. He previously held a professorship at Heidelberg University from 2015 to 2022, following research and academic appointments at the University of California, Los Angeles. Earlier in his career, he worked at the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences and was a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University. He received his doctorate in 1999 and Diploma in Mineralogy in 1995 from the University of Giessen, Germany. His contributions to geoscience have been recognised through honours including Fellowship of the Mineralogical Society of America, a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award and a Carl Zeiss Foundation German International Scholar Recruitment Award.