Function and Responsibilities:

I am the group leader of the rheology group. My responsibilities cover the research activities in the high-temperature creep laboratory (Creep rigs) as well as in the high-temperature, high-pressure laboratory (Paterson apparatus). Furthermore, I am responsible for the CT scan (Nanotom) that enables us to take X-ray scans of rock samples of different sizes to investigate their microstructures in a non-destructive way.

Research Interests:

My main research interests lie at the interface between petrology/mineralogy, geophysics, and material science. To be more specific, I am mainly interested in how processes that take place over a few nano- to millimetres such as metamorphic reactions and crystal plastic deformation may influence the deformation behaviour of rocks at much larger spatial scales, e.g., metre to kilometre scale. My scientific approach is experimental work coupled with extensive microstructural and chemical analyses of the samples. Using reaction kinetics or laboratory-derived flow laws for plastic deformation, I try to extrapolate between laboratory time scales (minutes to days) to geological time scales at which we expect rocks to flow (thousands to millions of years).

The main research questions, I am working on are:

Could metamorphic reactions be responsible for the nucleation of earthquakes deep down in Earth's lower crust and mantle where rocks are generally expected to rather flow than fracture or frictionally slide?

How does the interplay between brittle and plastic deformation mechanisms at the grain scale (e.g., microcracking and crystal plastic deformation) influence the overall deformation behaviour of rocks?

Could we use plastic deformartion such as mechanical twinning to estimate paleostresses in natural rocks?

How do fluids enter rocks in the lower continental crust and how exactly do these fluids interact with rocks?

Career:

Since 2024: Senior researcher and group leader of the rheology group in section 4.2 at GFZ Potsdam

2022-2024: NERC Independent Research Fellow at Imperial College London

2019-2022: Postdoc at Ruhr-Universität Bochum

2017-2019: Feodor Lynen-Fellowship of the Alexander von Humoldt-Foundation at the University of Oslo

2014-2017: PhD at the École Normale Supérieure Paris

Education:

B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Geological Science at Freie Universität Berlin

Awards:

Outstanding Early Career Scientist Award of the Earth Magnetism and Rock Physics Division of the European Geosciences Union

Victor Moritz Goldschmidt-Award by the Deutsche Mineralogische Gesellschaft (DMG)

Beate Mocek-Award by the Deutsche Mineralogische Gesellschaft (DMG)