In memory of the petrologist and geochemist Beate Mocek, the DMG has awarded the Beate Mocek Award since 2013. The award is intended to support outstanding early-career female scientists in the field of mineralogy, with a particular focus on petrology and geochemistry.

As several outstanding applications were received, the award committee decided to present the prize to two recipients this year.

One award was presented to Ninja Braukmüller (University of Cologne) to support her participation in the 2020 Goldschmidt Conference in Hawaii. The second award was presented to Laura Otter (Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia).

Laura Otter plans to conduct experiments at the Advanced Light Source synchrotron in Berkeley, California, and to present her results at the AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco.

In her doctoral research, Ninja Braukmüller investigates the behavior of volatile phases in chondritic meteorites and the Earth. She demonstrated that volatile elements in carbonaceous chondrites exhibit a hockey stick-shaped depletion pattern. Several lines of evidence suggest that this behavior also applies to the Earth.

Laura Otter's doctoral thesis, entitled “Micro- to Nano-Scale Architecture and Aspects of Skeletal Growth in Marine Calcifiers,” uses micro- to nanoscale analytical techniques to provide new insights into the structure and growth of mollusk shells, particularly with regard to their mechanical properties.