Bachelor graduate honoured twice for his thesis
David Hafezi Rachti was awarded twice for his Bachelor thesis “Interpretable Machine Learning to understand Meteorological Impacts on Ecosystem Carbon Uptake". David performed his Bachelor work and follow-up research in the Reichstein department (BGI) and the research group Atmosphere-Biosphere Coupling, Climate and Causality (ABC3) supervised by Alexander Winkler and Christian Reimers. His Bachelor thesis was co-supervised by Prof. Felix Ament (University of Hamburg).
At this year's EGU24 conference in Vienna, David presented a poster highlighting results from his Bachelor thesis (University of Hamburg), along with ongoing work in the ABC3 group to which he contributes as a research assistant. In his Bachelor project, he utilises an innovative interpretable machine learning framework to quantify the impact of multi-scale meteorological events on carbon uptake in forest ecosystems. This approach allows for the identification of legacy effects in ecosystems linked to past meteorological anomalies, such as droughts and heatwaves. For his EGU poster, David was awarded with this year’s “Outstanding Student and PhD candidate Presentation” (OSPP).
For his Bachelor thesis, David also received the 1st prize of the “Young Climate Scientist Award 2024” (5000€), issued by the Center for Earth System Research and Sustainability (CEN) at the University of Hamburg. The jury rated the work as 'technically excellent, innovative and above average', emphasizes 'the high novelty especially for bachelor theses' and praises not only the content but also the form: 'the sensible structure, the illustrations, the conciseness of the language and the focus on the essentials'. The award is presented every two years, and the award ceremony was held on October 9th, 2024 in Hamburg.
David Hafezi Rachti did his bachelor's degree in meteorology at the University of Hamburg and is now a master's student in Earth System Data Science and Remote Sensing at Leipzig University. He continues to work as student helper within our BGI groups. Congratulations and we wish him all the best for the future!
