One of Professor Ray's main areas of work is what is known as multi-scale modeling. She cooperates with geoscientists to learn more about the nature and structure of soils. "The microstructure of the soil has a direct influence on its macroscopic behavior. Therefore, one focus of my work is to build bridges between these two scales", describes Professor Ray. Since the composition of soils is not static, but constantly changing, this places special demands on the multi-scale modeling of questions in this area. Soil plays an important role in questions of energy, sustainability, climate and the environment – as a reservoir for water, carbon and as a habitat for microorganisms. For example, multi-scale modeling provides the basis for simulating the uptake of water and nutrients by roots as well as ideal living conditions for microorganisms – which can also serve as a basis of knowledge for combating hunger.
Prof. Dr. Nadja Ray studied mathematics with a minor in theoretical physics at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. She received her doctorate there in 2013 and her habilitation at FAU in 2020. She already received funding from various institutions for her doctorate, and was awarded the Dr.-Klaus-Körper Prize of the Society for Applied Mathematics and Mechanics for her doctoral thesis. In addition, the FAU Faculty of Natural Sciences honored the researcher's outstanding scientific achievements with the Faculty Women's Award and the FAU Habilitation Award. She is involved in the research training group "Interfaces, Complex Structures, and Singular Limits in Continuum Mechanics: Analysis and Numerics" that is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and is head of two DFG projects on multi-scale modeling of soil structures.
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