My name is Tarek S. El-Madany and I’m the new head of the Central Service Group “Field Experiments and Instrumentation” at MPI-BGC in Jena. I am taking over from Olaf Kolle, who will be retiring next year. In Olaf’s blog you find many details about our group and what we are responsible for and what we do in ATTO.
I’m a trained landscape ecologist and specialized in micrometeorology. Before starting this new job, I was a research group leader at MPI-BGC and responsible for a big experimental site in Spain. But as part of my research, I had already planned and installed many experiments in various countries. For my PhD, I did eddy covariance measurements of fog droplet fluxes in a mountain cloud forest in Taiwan. I utilized SoDAR measurements to identify atmospheric flows and how they impact the nocturnal turbulent exchange of energy and CO2. During my work at MP-BGC, I focused on nutrient and drought effects on water use efficiency at ecosystem scale. In general, I’m very interested in biosphere-atmosphere interactions, the water and carbon cycle as well as non-rain water inputs – all things that are also studied at ATTO.
I am right now visiting all the field sites that are maintained by MPI-BGC together with Olaf as part of the transition. I’m very much looking forward to getting to know you and seeing the science, life, infrastructure and technical installations that were, and are, developed at ATTO.
