Dr. Sarah Incel is a young experimental mineralogist with exceptional potential for a distinguished scientific career. Even at this early stage, she has already demonstrated an impressive ability to establish herself on the international research stage.
Sarah's research combines mineralogy and geophysics to investigate how mineral reactions and phase transformations influence earthquake generation and how fluid flow interacts with rock failure in the Earth's crust. To address these questions, she employs a combination of high-pressure experiments, microanalytical techniques, thermodynamic modelling, and geophysical methods. Through this interdisciplinary approach, she has demonstrated how the eclogitization of blueschists in subduction zones can trigger earthquakes—a process that had been hypothesized from field observations for more than thirty years but had never before been demonstrated experimentally. She has also shown how, and under which conditions, phase transformations involving feldspars and serpentinites can induce seismic activity. Building on these experimental observations, she has developed state-of-the-art microphysical models that provide direct input for the interpretation of geophysical observations.
Sarah's international career has involved multiple fresh starts in new scientific and cultural environments, each requiring adaptation to new laboratories and different research cultures. It is therefore all the more remarkable that she has consistently demonstrated that the quality of her research is more important than the quantity of her scientific output.
Sarah Incel is a highly deserving recipient of the 2022 Victor Moritz Goldschmidt Prize of the German Mineralogical Society.
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Oliver Plümper · Utrecht
