Hannes Hofmann is the head of a new Helmholtz Young Investigator Group in GFZ Section Geoenergy. He started on 1 July. He will be funded as a postdoc for six years as part of the Helmholtz Young Investigators Grant Programme. Hannes Hofmann's Group is called ARES "Advanced reservoir engineering concepts for a controlled utilization of geothermal energy in urban areas".

The working group deals with the development and validation of new concepts for the efficient and safe use of deep geothermal energy in urban areas. The focus is on methods for increasing the performance of geothermal wells while reducing influences on the environment such as induced seismicity. The work of the Helmholtz Young Investigator Group includes experiments in laboratory, mine and field scale as well as numerical simulations. The partner university is the TU Berlin, where Hannes Hofmann will give the integrated lecture "Geothermal reservoir engineering" from winter term 2020/21.

Hannes Hofmann studied geotechnology in Berlin, received his PhD at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, within the framework of the Helmholtz-Alberta Initiative and was subsequently employed for two years as a post-doc at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Since 2017 he has been working at the GFZ within the EU project "DESTRESS - Demonstration of soft stimulation treatments of geothermal reservoirs" on the planning and implementation of hydraulic stimulation experiments at various geothermal sites.(jz)