Exclusive interview: Christoph Breitkreuz

VIPS Team

Can you please give us your name and a short introduction about yourself?

Christoph

My name is Christoph Breitkreuz. I was born in Berlin some time ago. And I’m a geologist. For almost 20 years now I have been a Professor at the TU Bergakademie Freiberg in Germany.

VIPS Team

Do you have a volcano or volcanic system that taught to you the most?

Christoph

Yeah, ignimbrites and calderas are really sexy. I work on ancient successions, but I have visited some active locations just to understand the processes. Then I can apply this knowledge to ancient volcanic successions, which is my favorite research topic.

VIPS Team

How would you describe your research approaches? And what motivates your research?

Christoph

Haha, well, I’m curious. From the first week, when I started to study geology, I liked to be outside and to understand how rocks are formed. My approach is more evolutionary, I look into an area, but it takes some time for me to understand what the rocks are telling me. I’m not like the stereotypical researcher, some people, they go into the field and after five minutes they know how they publish this in the journal Geology. That is not my style, I am not capable of doing that. I need more time. Over time I realized what is important to be published and what is not so important. I think I have, what we say in Germany, a good nose for good topics.

VIPS Team

What are your favourite aspects of your job?

Christoph

I like to work with young people and I like to teach, especially grad student projects. However, it can be tedious and get on your nerves. Because with every student, you have to start from scratch. In the end the good feeling that comes with teaching is more important than all the negatives. I very much like reading books on geology. And then I like to do research. So, in the last 20 to 30 years finishing projects with good publications has been what I have aimed for.

VIPS Team

And why is your research relevant?

Christoph

I think it contributes to the regional evolution of an area. In addition, it also contributes to the general understanding of, for example, physical geology and volcanic systems. At least I hope I can contribute. And that may be somebody somewhere else in the world can read my paper and say: “Oh, yes! I understand my rocks better now.”

VIPS Team

How would you define your role as a scientist in society? And what outreach do you do?

Christoph

On a regular basis, I go to schools and give talks. We also have public lectures to whom I give talks mostly about volcanoes, of course. I think it is very important, it is our duty as state paid professors to do public outreach, because it is important that people know about their environment. If they’re conscious about their environment, they will care more about it. And this helps a lot.

VIPS Team

What do you consider your biggest academic achievement?

Christoph

Well, I created the Center for Volcanic Textures (CVT), which is a working archive with more than 3000 volcanic rocks. There, you can see the variety of volcanic textures. I also initiated the series of field workshops about laccoliths, dykes and sills (LASI). The first one was in Freiberg in 2002, and we will have the sixth in Argentina in November 2019. I also co-created a group among Polish, Czech and German researchers called Vents . This is a collaboration about late Paleozoic volcanic centres in the neighboring areas.

VIPS Team

What challenges or setbacks have you faced? And do you have a biggest failure?

Christoph

I know the answer to these questions, but I don’t really want to comment too much. Because it’s very personal. I think almost every scientist has this feeling that they have to find their position in the, let’s say, hierarchy. You know, there are some people playing in the Europe league. And I know I will never make it. I mean, this was a metaphor towards football. You have to live with being as good as you are and not to become too frustrated. When I ask for money for the German Research Foundation (DFG), probably two out of five proposals are granted, which is not too bad, but it also gives you some pain. Well, the biggest disaster was probably a paper which I wanted to publish. After two rounds of reviews, which were positive, the editor looked at the paper and said she didn’t believe it. So, I threw it into the trash can, I was so angry about it. This is a difficult question. I would have to think longer about it to give the most appropriate answers. Thus, we leave it at that 😉

VIPS Team

Sure, that’s fine. What do you think are the biggest challenges in your field today?

Christoph

You mean, in terms of scientific questions or challenges with society or whatever?! Geologist is an established profession. Most geologists dedicate their work to look for resources, water, energy, metals, and they’re involved in engineering geology. So, it is clear what geologists have to do. And then we have the basic research geologists like me, who contribute with research, which might be relevant in 50 to 60 years, for example, to better exploit or find mineral deposits or metal deposits.

VIPS Team

Can you take us through your career path? Have you always been in academia?

Christoph

As a matter of fact, yes, I mean, I also worked for a short time in a brewery but just to earn money. When I finished school I wanted to study chemistry. Then I changed my mind as I wanted to be in the fresh air and not in a stinking laboratory. Also, my marks were not so good. When I went into geology I studied very quickly, I didn’t miss anything, I didn’t fail any tests. This first part of the career was very easy. I then found a nice diploma topic in Spain on Cenozoic foraminiferous limestone. After that, a professor offered me a PhD position in Chile, with Mesozoic plutons. Followed by an offer to work in the Paleozoic sediments of Northern Chile, which has intercalations of volcanic rocks, and they started to really interest me. My best teacher has been a series of conferences and field workshops I attended. The first of which was in Santa Fe, 1989, New Mexico. And then I attended four or five IAVCEI field workshops. On these I was together with the all the big guys and girls in volcanology. When I finished my Andean studies, with all these volcanic rocks, I made a very good move in my career, dedicating my research to Central European Late Paleozoic volcanic systems. I found a lot of drill cores and drilling documentation in the former GDR, but also in western Poland, and then northern Czech Republic – and excellent co-operators in the respective state geological surveys. And this was really a magic combination, the knowledge from the field workshops, and then going with a new approach to do physical geology on the abundant Late Paleozoic volcanic complexes.

To finally get a permanent position was not easy – it took 14 years calculated from the year of my habilitation. A long time with many interviews and application talks. I lived on a number of research grants, temporal fellowships, teaching replacements, and I had times of unemployment. Getting an academic job is a machine with eleven (or so) control knobs, five of which you can turn. You need to be excellent, innovative, show up on every possible meeting, quickly build up a network and you need LUCK. But it worked finally, maybe also because my last fellowship, before the permanent position, was a quite prestigious one (Heisenberg Fellowship of the German Research Foundation).

VIPS Team

What are the best things about the academic work place, and on the other hand, how would you change it?

Christoph

The best thing is that you can decide which projects you carry out and with whom you work on projects together with. I mean not so much with the students, they need to do bachelor theses and master theses, but then also with them you find good people. The most challenging problem is students who are good, but who have psychological problems, this is really what makes me sad to see that they have to fight against these problems that they have, when they are afraid of finishing texts and so on.

Change in the academic area, I acknowledge it has to be competitive because we are living of state money, at least in Germany. Thus, we have to have a certain performance, we have to publish, we have to teach, we have to do public outreach, these are our obligations. Therefore, I would not say that we should change a lot in the academic environment. Sometimes your colleagues get on your nerves, but this happens in every profession.

VIPS Team

What advice do you have for Early Career Researchers aspiring for a career in Volcanology?

Christoph

Work a lot and establish a network of professional young and old researchers. When you get as old as me then you live off this network. With “network” I mean people you can go to and say “can you help me with this?” or “can we do a project together?” Through this network you will be able to estimate your qualities. My other piece of advice is to go to as many field workshops as possible, as this is where you will learn the most and meet people.

VIPS Team

Thank you, Christoph.