Bahar S. Razavi
SSS Soil System Sciences
The 2019 Division Outstanding Early Career Scientist Award is awarded to Bahar S. Razavi for outstanding contributions to the understanding of biogeochemical processes in terrestrial ecosystems, in particular the effects of abiotic factors on soil organic matter and nutrient cycling.
Razavi is an early career, energetic and successful researcher in the biogeosciences. The main focus of her excellent research is soil organic matter decomposition and nutrient acquisition by plant and microorganisms. She uses novel, self-developed analytical tools, in combination with stable and radioactive isotopes to trace carbon and nitrogen fluxes and examine the effects of abiotic factors on decomposition and nutrient cycling in soils. Over a period of four years, she published 22 papers in leading journals in soil science, being the first author on six of them (h-index: 9 and 1 highly cited paper).
Razavi immigrated from Iran to Germany for her PhD studies from 2013 to January 2017, at the Georg August University of Göttingen, where she graduated summa cum laude and was awarded the best dissertation of the year in the Lower Saxony region. Simultaneously, she was awarded a start-up fund by Göttingen University, which is a highly competitive award, and a President’s International Fellowship Initiative by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Her ability to interact with both the scientific and the commercial sectors resulted in her initiation of an intensive collaborative network worldwide, including members from Germany, France, China, Australia, USA and Poland. As a result, she has successfully established her own research group, consisting of 16 active and ambitious young researchers, supported solely by her own projects. Her achievements led to her appointment as an Assistant Professor at Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, Germany since 2018, only two years after her PhD completion.
As an active young scientist, Razavi has contributed to the annual EGU General Assembly since 2015 by delivering more than five oral presentations and 16 posters as well as convening and chairing sessions, in particular on plant-soil-microbial interactions and soil life visualisation, where she demonstrated her excellent skills in knowledge dissemination. Her contribution to this field and transfer of knowledge to the large number of students she supervises and teaches are exemplary at this early stage of her scientific career. She is a worthy winner of the SSS Division Outstanding Early Career Scientists Award.