Research Group

Current Group Structures and Members

Usually, as a university professor you work with a group of postdocs, PhD students and master students. I have done this many years at the University of Göttingen and since 2006 as lecturer/reader/professor at the University of Reading in the UK, continuing this activity with a portion of my time. Currently this involves seven PhD students and two master students.

At a research institute, when you lead a divison or group, you have usually several permanent scientists in your group, plus some scientists on third-party funded research projects. These might be postdocs or research scientists.

Deutscher Wetterdienst is a federal institution with a strong business area of research. I have been leading the data assimilation division of DWD 2010-2021, with about 35-37 scientists in my group in 2020 (18 of them permanent). We now restructured into two divisions related to data assimilation, one on algorithms for initialization together with ensemble control (FE11), the other on observations modeling and verification (FE12).

I became head of the NWP department in 10/2020. NWP has about 90 scientists in house in four divisions (49 permanent). There are 7 leading scientists directly reporting to the NWP department head, including the four division heads. All other scientists report to the four division heads in our department:

FE11 Division Head on Data Assimilation and Predictability
FE12 Division Head on Observations Modeling and Verification
FE13 Division Head on Numerical Modeling
FE14 Division Head on Physical Parametrization and Dispersion Modeling
Hans-Ertel Center (HErZ) DWD-Theme-Co-Leader Reanalysis
Hans-Ertel Center (HErZ) DWD-Theme-Co-Leader Data assimilation
Hans-Ertel Center (HErZ) DWD-Theme-Co-Leader Modelling & Parametrization

We have regular meetings within NWP:

Division Heads (once to twice per month)
Division Member Meeting (once to twice per month or weekly)
Routine Meeting Coordination (every Tuesday 9-10am)
Group meetings, e.g. of the DA-Algorithm Group, RADAR Group, Satellite Group, Ensemble Group, …

and for coordinating development and operations of NWP within DWD:

KG NWV (coordination group numerical weather prediction) led by head of NWP

Our development is taking place in a network of partners including

the Max-Planck-Institute (MPI-M),
the German Climate Computing Centre (DKRZ),
Deutscher Wetterdienst
the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT),
the COSMO Consortium for Small Scale Modelling with the weather services of Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Romania, Greece, Russia, Poland, Israel.
the climate center C2SM in Switzerland
the Hans-Ertel-Centre (HErZ) in Munich, Bonn/Cologne, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Berlin

We have an intensive interaction with these institutions and many scientists in different steering groups, working groups and committees. There are international and national coordination groups:

COSMO Steering Committee (COSMO-STC) (2-3 times a year)
ICON-D5 Directors Group (with C5 participating) (every 3 months)
ICON-C5 Coordination Group (every two weeks)
ICON-Seamless Coordination Group (4-6 weeks)

ICON-Seamless Working Group Meetings

Atmosphere,
Atmosphere-Land,
Atmosphere-Ocean,
Data Assimilation

ICON-Consolidated Meetings

We run yearly workshops and training:

ICCARUS (ICON/COSMO/CLM/ART User Seminar) in March
COSMO General Meeting (COSMO-GM) in September
ICON Training Course in the fourth quarter of the year

as well as further workshops and symposia in cooperationwith partners, e.g. the

International Symposium on Data Assimilation (ISDA)