Who I am and how I got there

Growing up in the Mediterranean environment on Mallorca until the age of five my earliest childhood memories are deeply connected to the rugged limestone landscapes, arid climate and appreciative handling of water. In the remote rural area potable water came from our well, which not only raised my awareness for water but also for the fact that kids at that age don’t appreciate ice cold showers…

After listening to a talk at the University at the age of 14 I got fascinated by the field of Geoscience and the comprehensive nature of associated research methods. As an undergraduate student I was impressed by structural Geosciences and pore-space analysis. Being introduced to programming by my uncle I immediately got hooked by the subject of Hydrogeology and fluid dynamics at the University. Numerical modeling and model development have been part of my daily life as a scientist since.

I received my Diploma from the University of Goettingen in 2009 working on unsaturated multi-continuum modeling of karst aquifers. During my doctoral studies I developed Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics models at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory under supervision of Prof. Alexandre Tartakovsky and University of Goettingen. Particle-based pore space modeling approaches opened up a completely new small-scale perspective for me on discrete flow dynamics in addition to catchment-scale characterization and modeling, and helped me to establish a scale-continuous research environment. I received my Ph.D. in 2014 from the University of Goettingen, Faculty of Geosciences and was then employed as an Akademischer Rat auf Zeit (Junior Lecturer, Assistant Professor) leading the Fractured Rock Hydrogelogy group at the Department of Applied Geology, University of Goettingen. Since 2023 I work at the Institute of Environmental Assessment and Water Research, Barcelona (Spain) and will defend my Habilitation thesis at the University of Goettingen in Germany this year.