Press Release No. 33 | July 9, 2020

DFG Recognises Early Career Achievements in Geoscience

Anja Allabar and Milad Asgarimehr to be awarded Bernd Rendel Prize 2020 / Presentation at the annual meeting of the German Geological Society in 2021

Anja Allabar and Milad Asgarimehr to be awarded Bernd Rendel Prize 2020 / Presentation at the annual meeting of the German Geological Society in 2021

The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) is to award the Bernd Rendel Prize 2020 to Anja Allabar from the University of Tübingen and Milad Asgarimehr from the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences/TU Berlin for the promising and original geoscientific research they have conducted at the start of their careers. The decision was made by a jury consisting of members of the DFG’s geosciences review boards. The researchers will each receive €2,000 from the Bernd Rendel Foundation, which is administered by the Stifterverband. The aim of the prize money is to enable prizewinners to participate in international conferences and meetings, for example. The prize will be awarded at the annual meeting of the German Geological Society (DGGV); however, this will not take place until 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Geoscience graduate Anja Allabar (28) is currently in the third year of her doctoral project, which is being supervised at the University of Tübingen and conducted together with researchers from Great Britain, Italy, the USA and Germany. The ambitious project aims to redefine the complex processes involved in the release of gases from water-rich rock melts in order to gain a better understanding of the processes that take place during explosive volcanic eruptions and better evaluate the related geohazards. In addressing this important and challenging research question, Anja Allabar has already made a pioneering breakthrough by innovatively combining experimental data and thermodynamic concepts. She has also contributed important impetus and ideas in four other publications. She has been recognised for her outstanding achievements and excellent potential in an academic career.

Milad Asgarimehr (31) studied geodesy in Iran and has been working on his doctoral dissertation since early 2017 as part of a joint project by TU Berlin and GFZ Potsdam. He studies signals of global GPS navigation satellite systems in earth and extreme weather monitoring which are reflected on the surface of the sea. Milad Asgarimehr intends to analyse distortions of these signals caused by wind and rainfall in order to optimise the GPS used for measuring wind and rain. During his doctorate, Asgarimehr has written four publications in internationally renowned journals as the first author, as well as two other publications as the co-author. Furthermore, he has already submitted his master’s thesis to two international publications. He is also committed to promoting the topic among the public with popular science publications. He impressed the jury with his clear vision for his future scientific career and for using the prize money for a research visit at the University of Michigan.

The DFG has presented the Bernd Rendel Prize annually since 2002 to graduates in geoscience who have not yet completed their doctorates for scientific purposes such as enabling them to attend international conferences and meetings. The prize fund is administered by the Stifterverband. The prize was endowed in memory of geology student Bernd Rendel, who died at a young age, by his family.

Further Information

For more information about the Bernd Rendel Prize and previous winners, please visit:

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