LIAG Forum 2025: In dialogue for excellent research
At the LIAG Forum, more than 70 participants discussed the institute’s research topics and structural orientation. The two-day event combined talks on LIAG’s overarching vision and research priorities with external guest inputs, concrete project examples, and working groups on cross-cutting themes. The aim was to take stock and gather feedback in order to identify priority fields for short- and medium-term action.
On 22 and 23 October 2025, external guests acting as “critical friends” and members of the Scientific Advisory Board, the advisory body to the institute’s governance, visited LIAG in Hanover for the newly established LIAG Forum. A series of presentations, project pitches with poster sessions, interactive working groups and a fishbowl discussion focused on scholarly exchange about LIAG’s research fields and on questions of the institute’s structural development.
Day 1: Focus on research development.
The event opened with LIAG Director Prof. Dr Martin Sauter, who briefly presented LIAG’s scientific priorities, unique features and goals, and outlined its organisational structure. This set the frame for Day 1, which centred on LIAG’s scientific orientation and productivity across its three core research fields: groundwater systems, geohazards, and georeservoirs.
This was followed by an impulse talk from Prof. Dr Ulrich Bathmann (currently University of Rostock; long-standing Director of the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research, IOW, until 2022) outlining key factors for excellent research and robust research structures. He commended LIAG’s coupling of basic and applied research and offered concrete suggestions on strategic direction, use and visibility of the work—highlighting how geophysics can contribute to solving societal challenges.
The LIAG research departments then presented their research questions and strategies within the current priority themes:
- Groundwater systems (Prof. Dr Mike Müller-Petke, Dr Christian Zeeden)
- Geohazards (Prof. Dr Gerald Gabriel, Prof. Dr Sumiko Tsukamoto)
- Georeservoirs as energy source and energy store (Prof. Dr Inga Moeck, Dr Hartwig von Hartmann)
Building on the current state of the art, the talks outlined ideas and plans for LIAG’s future development and provided entry points for lively feedback in the subsequent discussion.
Project pitches with poster sessions.
In the afternoon, posters showcased projects from all three research fields
These included:
- Groundwater systems: SeeKaquA, Blue Transition, Regroup II, OGER
- Geohazards: OSNING & SAFETY (two fault zones in Germany), HOPE, Temari, GeoMetEr
- Georeservoirs: ArtemIS, DEKAPALATIN-Bertha, HyAfrica, Pannonian Basin (Fallstudie).
The poster session enabled direct exchange on objectives and results, survey methods, workflows as well as application links and knowledge transfer in the projects. The project examples highlight, in particular, the application focus and societal relevance of LIAG’s international and national research—from groundwater exploration and evaluation using innovative methods, through risk assessment of geohazards such as neotectonics, to georeservoirs as energy sources in the fields of geothermal energy and natural hydrogen.
![[Translate to Englisch:] Poster-Sessions. Quelle: Anne-Marie Pogoda.](/fileadmin/_processed_/8/b/csm_AX6A9163_4ea4ecf3a7.jpg)
![[Translate to Englisch:] Poster-Sessions. Quelle: Anne-Marie Pogoda.](/fileadmin/_processed_/d/d/csm_AX6A9278_546cd98717.jpg)
Conclusion with a plenary feedback discussion
A dedicated session gathered external perspectives on the research areas and projects. Guiding questions included which topics are already well addressed and where additional needs are seen.
Day 2: Structural orientation and development
Day 2 focused on the institute’s structural orientation in the areas of internationalisation, researchers in early career stages, equality & work-life balance, and open science. Outputs from the working groups fed into a subsequent interactive fishbowl discussion. Moderated by Dr Ilke Borowski-Maaser, the feedback from the critical friends and the advisory body helped to confirm strengths and opportunities while sharpening research action areas and deriving concrete implications for institute-wide organisational processes.
Sincere thanks to all guests
“With the LIAG Forum we deliberately created a framework for discussing the institute’s research priorities and its organisational development,” says Prof. Dr Martin Sauter. “On behalf of LIAG, I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to all external guests and the Scientific Advisory Board for their time and constructive feedback, as well as to all contributors and employees for their talks, poster sessions and commitment to delivering the entire forum programme.”
The LIAG Forum is planned to take place every two years to review and strategically discuss developments at LIAG.
