Christian Zeeden

SSP Stratigraphy, Sedimentology and Palaeontology

The 2019 Division Outstanding Early Career Scientist Award is awarded to Christian Zeeden for his outstanding research in the field of astrochronology and for his innovative statistical approaches in constructing astronomically tuned robust time scales.

Christian Zeeden, now a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute for Celestial Mechanics and Computation of Ephemerides (IMCCE), Observatoire Paris, finished his PhD thesis in 2013 within the Marie Curie training network GTSnext, at Utrecht University, Netherlands. From 2013 to 2016, Zeeden worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) Collaborative Research Centre ‘Our way to Europe’ at RWTH Aachen, Germany. At IMCCE he now dedicates his research to the field of astronomical age model development and its integration into radiometric and biostratigraphic chronologies. His scientific questions are centered on the stability and non-linear expression of astronomical signals in the Earth system. He develops and improves statistical validation methods for different types of chronologies on Cenozoic marine and terrestrial archives. Zeeden started his research in this field with a revised Miocene astronomical chronology and improved age estimates for foraminiferal and nanofossil events. The application of his statistical tools on data of Quaternary loess-palaeosol sequences in Europe and Central Asia is his most recent research field and allows for the evaluation of patterns, timing and rates of dust accumulation, soil formation, and landscape evolution. His impressive publication record highlights his ability of setting up a successful global and interdisciplinary collaboration network. He is a worthy recipient of the SSP Division Outstanding Early Career Scientists Award.