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„What drives me: Understanding forests in order to protect them.“

Since 2023 I have been leading the workgroup “Digital Forest Twins” at the Forest Protection Institute. Together with my team, we create virtual replicas of forests to better understand their development under climate change, pests, and other stresses. Our goal is to make visible today how forests of tomorrow could look—and thereby discover ways to strengthen their resilience in the long term. My daily life is shaped by exchange, data analysis, and modeling, but also by the question: how can we present our insights in a way that foresters, policymakers, and society can use? I find projects that connect real measurements with digital models particularly fascinating, as they make future scenarios tangible.

My path to here was not preordained. I studied Business Mathematics and initially saw my professional future in banking. Yet the fascination with forests never left me. They appear steady and simple—and at the same time are highly complex systems full of secrets. Why do some trees survive extreme droughts while others die? Such questions led me to research. At the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) in Leipzig I learned how to model ecosystems with computer simulations. It became clear that models are only valuable if they can be understood and applied in practice. I can bridge this gap between theory and application at the JKI. Here I found a strong, interdisciplinary team that brings our research to life with knowledge from biology, ecophysiology, remote sensing, and many other fields.

What drives me is the combination of scientific precision and the desire to find solutions that truly help people. It is especially important to me to explain complex interrelationships in a way that non-experts can understand. What motivates me is the thought that our work makes a concrete contribution to protecting forests and thus to future generations.

At the JKI I value the close link between research and practice. Ideas are not only developed on paper but are directly refined in collaboration with the forestry sector. The team atmosphere is open, respectful, and grounded in mutual appreciation. I am particularly excited that we all share the same standard: not to hoard knowledge, but to carry it into society and actively shape the future.