He completed his Ph.D. on the subject of diamonds in 1997 and has developed an in-depth knowledge of diamonds from numerous parts of the Arctic, South America, Sub-Saharan Africa and Australia. After graduating, Dr. Hutchison worked for the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory where his research was funded by the NSF and NASA. He has since pursued consulting and project generation work whilst maintaining his research interests through collaboration and publication.

Dr. Hutchison's research has included collaborations with the Institute of Advanced Studies in Canberra, Australia, the Geological Surveys of Denmark and Greenland and Australia's Northern Territory, Universities of Durham, Edmonton, Macquarie and University College London. In 2005 Dr. Hutchison was awarded a prestigious Marie Curie Fellowship and in 2010 was a recipient of an Australian Academy of Science Linkage Award. As a research scientist, he has directed work on projects including the controls on impurities in natural and synthetic diamonds, diamond growth at high pressure and temperatures, and the mechanisms influencing prospectivity of deep-sourced diamonds. Dr. Hutchison has been actively involved in developing new techniques for minerals exploration notably in age determination of host rocks, rapid mineral analyses and fingerprinting of indicator minerals, and in the understanding of structural controls on emplacement of igneous-hosted ore bodies. Dr. Hutchison has been an invited lecturer on deep mantle diamonds at several institutions, has served as a chair for the American Geophysical Union and held the position of Honorary Associate of the University of Sydney. He maintains strong ties with academia and continues to publish to a high international standard, concurrent with his exploration work.