Olivier Bachmann has been a Professor of Magmatic Petrology at the Institute of Geochemistry and Petrology in the Department of Earth Sciences since 2012.

He was born in Geneva in 1973.

Olivier Bachmann obtained a BSc in earth sciences at the University of Geneva in 1995, an MSc in 1997 and a PhD in Volcanology-​Petrology-Geochronology in 2000. From 2001 to 2003 he was a post-​doctoral researcher at the University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.

In 2003 he returned to Switzerland to work as a lecturer at the University of Geneva until 2007. In 2007 he was appointed as an Assistant Professor and in 2011 an Associate Professor at the University of Washington.