Michaela A. Dippold

BG Biogeosciences

The 2017 Division Outstanding Early Career Scientist Award is awarded to Michaela A. Dippold for outstanding research in the field of terrestrial biogeosciences. The originality of her research is the use of position specific labeling of organic molecules to understand their turnover and fate in soil.

Michaela Anna Dippold uses advanced stable isotope approaches to disentangle biogeochemical processes at the molecular level. Her original research involves the use of position specific labeling of organic molecules to understand their turnover and fate in soil. This approach infers microbial use and transformation of organic molecules and their contribution to C stabilisation is a big step forward towards the quantitative understanding of processes controlling soil C turnover. She defended her PhD thesis in 2014 at the University of Bayreuth, Germany with the highest possible apprehension (summa cum laude). The outstanding nature of her work was recognised nationally by the German Science Foundation and the German Soil Science Society, both of which awarded her work. She got international recognition through invited presentations at international conferences. Since obtaining her PhD, Dippold has developed her own research program, and was successful in receiving third party funding from several sources. Currently, she is working as an academic assistant at the University of Goettingen. She is engaged in teaching, gaining appointments not only in Germany, but also in Switzerland and Chile. It is remarkable that despite the early stage of her career she has already supervised 19 students doing bachelors, masters and/or PhDs.