Joël Brugger obtained his PhD at the University of Basel, Switzerland in 1996, for his work on the geochemistry and mineralogy of metamorphosed syn-genetic exhalative Mn deposits.
In 2002 he joined the South Australian Museum and the University of Adelaide, and established the Minerals, Microbes and Solutions research group, dedicated to using state-of-the-art experimental techniques to study the transport and deposition of metals and mineral-microbe-fluid interaction in geological environments.
In January 2014 he took up a new chair in Synchrotron Geosciences at Monash University.