Awarding of the 12th Friedrich Robert Helmert Prize

Dr Elena Macdonald, who successfully completed her dissertation in Section 4.4 ‘Hydrology’ in September 2024, has been awarded the Friedrich Robert Helmert Prize for the best doctoral thesis at the GFZ in 2024/2025. The prize is awarded annually by GFZ Friends, the association of friends and supporters of the GFZ, and comes with prize money of €1,000.

Elena Macdonald receives the prize for her doctoral thesis on ‘When extreme floods are not as rare as they seem: controls of heavy-tailed flood peak distributions,’ supervised by Prof. Bruno Merz and Dr. Sergiy Vorogushyn. Elena’s PhD work in the Hydrology section focused on the important question which mechanisms influence the heavy-tail distribution of floods, which can lead to unexpected extreme floodings and damages. Her extremely systematic approach that considers in particular different process interactions is novel and unique. The results led to relevant new recommendations for assessing extreme flood hazards by considering rain distribution and runoff formation. 

Elena completed her doctorate at the University of Potsdam in under 4 years and graduated Magna Cum Laude. She has 4 first-author peer-reviewed papers and contributed among others to a German publication addressing extreme flood hazards. As Elena also described her research, the goals and relevance extremely well in her PhD summary the reviewers agreed that she is a worthy winner of the 2025 Helmert Award. This year, four nominations were received. The prize was awarded on 10 July 2025 at the GFZ summer party.

Congratulations, dear Elena!