Prof. Dr Magdalena Scheck-Wenderoth, Director of Department 4 ‘Geosystems’, received the certificate of appointment as Professor in the field of ‘Sedimentary Basins and Georesources’ on 7 October 2024 – in joint appointment of the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences and the Technische Universität Berlin. She is moving from RWTH Aachen University, where she has held a professorship for sediment basin analysis since 2013, also as a joint appointment with the GFZ.

Main areas of research

Prof. Scheck-Wenderoth also heads GFZ-Section 4.5 ‘Subsurface Process Modelling’. In her research, she addresses the topics of geoenergy and geodynamics with the help of so-called digital twins of the subsurface. Digital twins are virtual reconstructions of real structures that can be used to test different “what if-scenarios”. In this case, they are based on structural models that depict the main features of the configuration of sediments, crustal rocks and the Earth's upper mantle identified through observation. On this basis, for example, the coupled transport of heat and fluids in the subsurface or the associated mechanical configuration can be simulated.

In the context of Scheck-Wenderoths research, such digital twins, which combine observations with simulations, are important for the safe and sustainable utilisation of the subsurface and for understanding deformation mechanisms in general. Examples of digital twins from the work at the GFZ are heat and groundwater in the subsurface of Berlin, Brandenburg and northern Germany; structure, heat and mechanical configuration in the Rhine Graben, the Alps and their forelands, the continental margins of the Atlantic, the Andes, and the North Anatolian Fault off Istanbul.

Important professional successes

Magdalena Scheck-Wenderoth has been the main supervisor of 20 completed doctoral projects, supervised more than 20 Master's and Bachelor's theses and has been a regular lecturer for more than 15 years. She is (co-)author of 154 peer-reviewed scientific publications and has acquired research funding totalling more than 8 million euros from various sources (German Research Foundation (DFG), Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), EU, industry, German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)).

Scheck-Wenderoth was an active member of the steering committee of three DFG Priority Programmes and co-spokesperson of the DFG International Graduate School StRATEGy in Argentina. From 2016 to 2024, she was an elected member of the DFG Review Board 314-01 Geology, Palaeontology. Since 2018, she has been Vice President of the DGGV (German Geological Society) and a member of the advisory board of DVGeo (umbrella organisation of several German geoscientific societies). She was Secretary General of the International Lithosphere Programme for seven years and served as Vice President of the Division Tectonics and Structural Geology of the European Geosciences Union (EGU). She has been a member of Academia Europea since 2018 and was appointed by the German government in 2020 as a member of the National Citizens’ Oversight Committee “Nationales Begleitgremium” assisting the Search for a High-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Site.

Scheck-Wenderoth has been conducting research at the GFZ since her doctoral thesis in the mid-1990s and after a short stay at Copenhagen University has held management positions since 2008: initially as section head, in the past ten years she has also headed three different departments at the GFZ and has been actively involved in the change management of several reorganisations. She is currently a member of the GFZ Director’s Meeting as Director of the ‘Geosystems’ Department, which comprises seven sections and around 300 employees working on a broad spectrum of systemic geosciences. Since 2013, she has also been a professor at RWTH Aachen University in a joint appointment with the GFZ.