scholarship Two new scholarship recipients in our ALIC²E group

Raymond has received the International Academic Freedom Scholarship from the Baden-Württemberg Foundation. It aims to offer research opportunities in Baden-Württemberg to postdoctoral researchers facing increasingly restricted academic freedoms. Each university in Baden-Württemberg can nominate two postdoctoral nominees for consideration for 15 awards. Through the 2-year award, this scholarship enables him to remain in Heidelberg and continue advancing our knowledge on how global climate models simulate sea salt aerosols. His funded project is entitled Improving Marine Aerosol Representation & Climate Forcing with Sea-SMART: Sea Salt Modeled Aerosol Representation of Tau, where he will integrate various sea salt aerosol emissions schemes into the Icosahedral Nonhydrostatic (ICON) model to characterize the uncertainty estimates of sea salt aerosol-cloud interactions.

For his doctoral research, Claus will be receiving both financial and non-material support from the Heinrich Böll Foundation — which is affiliated with the German Green party — starting on 1 September 2026. As part of the non-material support, the Foundation offers access to further-education and qualification programmes as well as opportunities to connect with doctoral researchers from other fields, academics and politicians. His doctoral research examines the global climate effect of the changing concentration of desert dust in the atmosphere, thereby contributing to the scientific evidence base on climate change that underpins societal decision-making. With this thematic focus and my background in climate science, he will also be contributing to the Foundation's "Social-Ecological Transformation" research cluster, which addresses the society-wide task of shaping a just, decarbonised future.