I am a post-doctoral researcher in the seismology group at Utrecht University. In January 2010 I received my PhD from the University of Munich for my work on Full Seismic Waveform Inversion for Structural and Source Parameters.

My principal research interests include the development and application of methods for full seismic waveform inversion, resolution analysis in tomography, the study of novel seismic observables such as rotations and strain, tectonics and geochemistry, Bayesian inference and general geophysical inverse theory. For my work I received the Keiiti Aki Award 2011 .

Through the co-supervision of several students I am involved in the Sample Project of the German Research Foundation and in the European Initial Training Network QUEST.


Selection of recent work :

Resolution analysis in full waveform inversion: We propose a new method for the quantitative resolution analysis in full seismic waveform inversion that overcomes the limitations of classical synthetic inversions while being computationally more efficient and applicable to any misfit measure.This allows us to infer 3-D distributions of direction-dependent resolution lengths and the image distortion introduced by the tomographic method. Our method allows for problem-dependent variations of the theme and for adaptations to exploration scenarios and other wave-equation-based tomography techniques that employ, for instance, georadar or microwave data. read more

Full waveform tomography for radially anisotropic structure: New insights into present and past states of the Australasian upper mantle : We combine spectral-element simulations and adjoint techniques in a non-linear full seismic waveform tomography for the radially anisotropic structure of the Australasian upper mantle. Our method allows us to explain 30 s waveforms in detail, and it yields tomographic images with locally 2 degree lateral resolution. Our model allows us to draw inferences concerning the past and present states of the Australian upper mantle and the formation of seismic anisotropy. read more