Portrait of Professor Eckert
Prof. Dr. rer. nat. et Ing. habil. Kerstin Eckert has held the Chair of Transport Processes at Interfaces since October 2016 as a joint appointment with the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR). She also heads the department of the same name at the HZDR's Institute of Fluid Dynamics.
Without transport processes at interfaces, the extraction of metals from ores would be almost priceless and many substances in the chemical industry would be impossible to produce. Wherever gases, liquids and solids meet, transport processes between their interfaces play a role - from bicycle rust to the refinement of surfaces. We are working on optimizing separation processes in multiphase flows in order to contribute to more resource-efficient production.
For me, being a professor means constantly learning in order to be able to conduct research at a high level and teach my subject area well. At the same time, I want to give students advice and guidance.
Students should be curious and motivated and realize that great results can only be achieved with hard work and self-discipline; at the same time, they should also use the freedom of their study time to do many things outside their immediate field of study.
The future belongs to cross-scale process understanding through interdisciplinary cooperation and the intelligent linking of experiment and simulation.
If I could study again, I would probably study physics again, given the conflict between physics and process engineering, but I would try to specialize more in engineering science and physical chemistry.
I see excellence on the one hand as an enormous challenge for the university and each of us to push our own boundaries, and on the other hand as an opportunity for Dresden to free itself a little from the damage caused by Pegida and the like, in addition to raising its scientific profile.