01.12.2014|Potsdam: Prof. Dr. Magdalena Scheck-Wenderoth is the new Director of GFZ Department 4 „Chemistry of the Earth“. She succeeds Prof. Dr. Jörg Erzinger, who very successfully held this position over the past years. Also starting from 1^st of December, Prof. Dr. Michael Kühn is new Director of "Technology Transfer Centres, Scientific Infrastructure and Platforms" which he will now jointly lead together with Dr. Jörn Lauterjung.

The research of Prof. Scheck-Wenderoth is focused on the topics of geoenergy and geodynamics of sedimentary basins, data-based structural modelling of sediments, crust and lithospheric mantle, coupled transport of heat and fluids in the subsurface, regional 3D gravity modelling, structural and subsidence history, and salt dynamics. She will continue this work as head of section “Basin analysis”.

Magdalena Scheck-Wenderoth is professor of „ Basin Analysis“ since 2013 at RWTH Aachen. Furthermore, she has been appointed Secretary General of the  International Lithosphere Program (ILP) the same year. She completed her dissertation in Geology 1997 at FU Berlin and was a research assistant professor at the University of Copenhagen in 2000. She has been affiliated with GFZ Potsdam since 1997 where she  took the lead of section 4.4 “Basin analysis” in 2008.

Prof. Kühn is also Head of GFZ Section "Hydrology" which he established in 2012. Prior to that, from 2009 to 2012, he was head of the Centre for CO2-Storage at the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences.  He is Professor for Hydrology since 2012 within the framework of a joint appointment with the University of Potsdam. He received his PhD in Geochemistry at the University of Bremen in 1997, which was followed in 2003 by his Habilitation in Hydrology at the Technical University Hamburg-Harburg.

Michael Kuhn’s research interests include geochemical water-rock interactions coupled with the numerical simulation of flow rates, heat diffusion, transport, chemical reactions, deformation, CO2-storage in geological formations, hydrogeothermal energy production, and the formation of mineral deposits.