Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Olaf Kolditz

Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ

Head of Department Environmental Informatics
Full Professor for Applied Environmental Systems Analysis at Technische Universität Dresden

04318 Leipzig, Permoser Str. 15
Tel: +49 341-6025-1281, Email: olaf.kolditz@ufz.de


Curriculum vitae

1980 - 1985 Study of Mechanics and Applied Mathematics at Kharkov-State-University, Ukraine
1985 - 1990 PhD Student at the Institute of Mechanics, Academy of Science of GDR, Berlin/Chemnitz
1990 PhD in Geohydrodynamics
1990 - 1993 PostDoc at Geological Survey of Lower Saxony, Hannover
1994 - 1999 Senior Scientist at Institute of Fluid Mechanics, University of Hannover
1996 Habilitation in Geohydrology at Faculty of Civil Engineering, University of Hannover
1999 - 2001 Assistant Professor (C2) at Institute of Fluid Mechanics, University of Hannover
2001 - 2004 Professor (C3) for Geohydrology and Hydroinformatics at Tübingen University
2001 - 2007 Director of int. Master course “Applied Environmental Geoscience”, Tübingen University
2004 Call to a W3 Professorship and Chair of Fluid Mechanics and Environmental Physics, Leibniz University of Hannover
2004 - 2007 Professor for GeoSystemsResearch at Tübingen University
since 2007 Professor for Applied Environmental System Analysis at Technical University of Dresden and Head of the Department Environmental Informatics with the UFZ
since 2007 Speaker / Think-Tank of the Helmholtz Graduate School HIGRADE
2011 Call as Technical Director to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), US

Activities in the scientific community, honors, awards

1990 Award for outstanding PhD thesis, Academy of Science of GDR
since 2013 Editor-in-Chief of Journal, Geothermal Energy
since 2014 Editor-in-Chief of Journal, Environmental Earth Sciences
2015 Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) President's International Fellowship (PIFI)
2021 UFZ Research Award for the OpenGeoSys research platform

Research and teaching fields

  • Environmental Fluid Mechanics (with applications in Hydrology, Geotechnics, Geothermics, Energy
  • Computational Mechanics and Software-Engineering, High-Performance-Computing
  • Environmental Information Systems, Scientific Visualization
  • Hydroinformatics and Hydrosystem Analysis (Graduate Courses at TU Dresden)
  • Environmental Modeling (Introductory and Advanced HIGRADE Courses)

Selected Publications

(Bibliometry: 260 ISI / 380 SCOPUS publications, h-index = 44 (ISI) / 57 (Google Scholar) > 14000 citations)

ORCID logo https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8098-4905

Kolditz O, Shao H, Wang W, Bauer S (2015): Thermo-Hydro-Mechanical-Chemical Processes in Fractured Porous Media: Modelling and Benchmarking - Closed-Form Solutions. In: Terrestrial Environmental Sciences, Vol. 1, Springer, Hei-delberg, ISBN 978-3-319-11894-9, 330pp.
Kolditz O, Görke UJ, Shao H, Wang W (2012): Thermo-hydro-mechanical/chemical processes in porous media. Lecture Notes in Computational Science and Engineering, Vol. 86, Springer, Heidelberg, ISBN 978-3-642-27176-2.
Kolditz O, Bauer S, Bilke L et al. (2012): OpenGeoSys: An open source initiative for numerical simulation of THMC pro-cesses in porous media, Environ. Earth Sci., 67(2): 589-599, DOI: 10.1007/s12665-012-1546-x.
Kolditz O, Delfs JO, Bürger CM, Beinhorn M, Park C-H (2008): Numerical analysis of coupled hydrosystems based on an object-oriented compartment approach, J. Hydro¬informatics, 10(3): 227-244.
Kolditz O, Bauer S (2004): A process-orientated approach to compute multi-field problems in porous media. J. Hydroin-formatics, 6: 225-244.
Kolditz O, de Jonge J (2004): Non-isothermal two-phase flow in porous media. Computational Mechanics, 33(5): 345-364.
Kolditz O (2002): Computational Methods in Environmental Fluid Mechanics. Graduate Textbook, Springer-Publisher, 406pp.

Google scholar

Short CV text

Prof. Kolditz is the head of the Department of Environmental Informatics at the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research (UFZ). He holds a Chair in Applied Environmental System Analysis at the Tech-nische Universität in Dresden. His research interests are related to environmental fluid mechanics, numerical methods and software engineering with applications in geotechnics, hydrology and energy storage. Prof. Kolditz is the lead scientist of the OpenGeoSys project (www.opengeosys.org), an open source scientific software platform for the numerical simulation of thermo-hydro-mechanical-chemical processes in porous media, in use worldwide. He studied theoretical mechanics and applied mathematics at the University of Kharkov, got a PhD in natural sciences from the Academy of Science of the GDR (in 1990) and earned his habilitation in engineering sciences from Hannover University (in 1996), where he became group leader at the Institute of Fluid Mechanics. Until 2001 he was full professor for Geohydrology and Hydroinformatics at Tübingen University and director of the international Master course in Applied Environmental Geosciences. Since 2007 he is the speaker of the Helmholtz graduate school for environmental research HIGRADE. Prof. Kolditz is Editor-in-Chief of two international journals Geothermal Energy (open access) and Environmental Earth Sciences (ISI). Prof. Kolditz is the leading scientist of the Sino-German network initiative “Research Centre for Environmental Information Science-RCEIS” dedicated to the development of comprehensive data integration and knowledge platforms in China (funded by the Helmholtz Association, in cooperation with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute for Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research) and of the joint priority project “Managing Water Resources in Urban Catchments - Chaohu” linked to the Mega-Water Project (funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, in cooperation with the Tongji University). Prof. Kolditz was awarded a professorship under the CAS President's International Fellowship (PIFI) in 2015.


Leipzig, 17.07.2023