Profile of HIGRADE participants
Name: Toni Schmidt (Germany)
Department Remote Sensing
Research topic
Estimation of high-resolution soil moisture dynamics from the synergy of multi-source data
April 2021
When I still was a student in Potsdam, I worked as an assistant at other Helmholtz centers: the German Research Center for Geosciences (GFZ) and the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI). My colleagues and I were always in contact with other scientists and technicians from other institutes. Among them was the UFZ in Leipzig.
Shortly before the end of my Master’s degree, I looked around for job offers. The newly founded Remote Sensing Center for Earth System Research (RSC4Earth), which is a collaboration between the Department of Remote Sensing at the UFZ and the Faculty of Physics and Geosciences at the University of Leipzig, advertised four doctoral positions at that time. I applied for a position that involves researching high-resolution soil moisture estimations using remote sensing and modeling. I had already dealt with this thematically during my studies and methodically it sounded very challenging and exciting. And here I am now.
Having lived in Berlin almost all of my life, it's nice to live in a smaller city. By bike, I can be almost anywhere I need to go in 10 to 15 minutes.
It's really great. Very interdisciplinary and full of experts.