Barringer Award to Prof. Kai Wünnemann

The Meteoritical Society honors Prof. Dr. Kai Wünnemann, head of the department Solar System, Impacts and Meteorites at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, and Prof. Dr. Gareth Collins, working group leader at Imperial College London, due to their great scientific merits in the field of mathematical modeling of meteorite craters. The Barringer Award ceremony took place on August 15 during the annual meeting of the Meteoritical Society.

The Barringer Award is one of the most prestigious scientific awards given in the field of impact and cratering research. Prof. Dr. Kai Wünnemann and Prof. Dr. Gareth Collins join the ranks of distinguished Barringer Award winners for their outstanding and fundamental advances in numerical modeling of impact craters and shock phenomena. "This is a great recognition of the many years of research by Prof. Dr. Kai Wünnemann and his British colleague and I warmly congratulate them on this outstanding award," announced Prof. Johannes Vogel, General Director at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin.

The two scientists have contributed significantly to scientific progress in impact and meteorite research through their pioneering further development of the simulation code iSALE. With the help of the shock physics code iSALE, which is freely accessible to researchers worldwide, comprehensive simulations of impact processes are made possible, which take into account the force effects, materiality, porosity as well as the three-dimensionality of impact objects. The modeling algorithm here is based on the SALE hydrocode, which was originally developed by staff at Sandia National Laboratories in the United States and has been continuously expanded and improved since the 1990s. "I am honored to have been selected, together with Gareth Collins, for the Barringer Award," explains Prof. Dr. Kai Wünnemann. "But of course, the recognition is not only for me, but for the numerous young scientists who have contributed to iSALE and continue to work on improvements."

A particular strength of the leading iSALE developers is their interdisciplinary and collaborative approach to research. Through close interaction with geoscientific groups and experimental studies, they succeed in building a bridge between modeling and nature. The simulation algorithm is regularly tested in practice and further developed based on the results. It is therefore not surprising that iSALE is now one of the leading modeling tools for the study of impact events and is used by a large international scientific community. iSALE has been used in numerous groundbreaking scientific papers on, among other things, the formation of large impact craters on Earth and the study of the motion of large rock avalanches.

Because of these far-reaching contributions to the field of impact research, Prof. Dr. Kai Wünnemann and Prof. Dr. Gareth Collins were selected by the Barringer Award selection committee from among numerous nominees for this year's award.

 

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The Barringer Award has been presented since 1984 for outstanding scientific achievements in the field of impact and crater research. The award was established in memory of the founding father of impact research, Daniel Moreau Barringer, who first demonstrated the existence of an impact crater on Earth. The crater he explored in Arizona is named Barringer Crater in his honor. 

Prof. Dr. Kai Wünnemann, head of the department Solar System, Impacts and Metorites at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, is concerned with the formation and collision history of our solar system, especially of the Earth-like planets and minor planets (asteroids). Physicochemical and geological-mineralogical processes during an impact are studied by field studies, using sample material from impact craters and meteorites, laboratory experiments and numerical computer models.

Impacts are a fundamental process in the solar system: they form planets from dust, they shape planetary surfaces, they cause mass extinctions, and they threaten the survival of humanity. Prof. Gareth Collins, Ph.D., professor of planetary science at Imperial College London, studies the multiple consequences of impacts in the solar system through the development and application of numerical impact models.
Because of these far-reaching contributions to the field of impact research, Prof. Dr. Kai Wünnemann and Prof. Dr. Gareth Collins were selected by the Barringer Award selection committee from among numerous nominees for this year's award.