Sandra Klinge, alumni of the Master Computational Engineering at RUB, was appointed to the professorship "Structural Mechanics and Structural Computation" (SMB www.smb.tu-berlin.de) at the Faculty of Transportation and Machine Systems at TU Berlin in July 2021. We from CompEng warmly congratulate her to her professorship. We have talked to Prof Dr.-Ing. habil. Klinge about her studies, her professorship, and her career.

Why did you choose to study the Master Computational Engineering at Ruhr-University Bochum?
Sandra Klinge: I chose CompEng on account of the scientific curriculum of the course. The focus of this Master's program was placed on numerical methods and their application in engineering: civil engineering as well as mechanical engineering. It offered an opportunity to acquire a lot of knowledge about the FEM but also about the finite difference method, finite volume method or boundary element method and parallel computing. This was exactly what I had been interested in: learning to develop new codes and to improve existing ones; to get faster and more efficient software and simultaneously to provide more realistic simulations.

What did you do in the time after your graduation in CompEng until your appointment to your professorship? Can you give us a brief review of your previous career?
After finishing my Master's course, I did my PhD and post-doc studies at Ruhr-University Bochum in the group of Professor Klaus Hackl. Thereafter, I pursued my scientific career as a junior professor in Computational Mechanics at TU Dortmund. In between, I was a visiting researcher at Graz University of Technology in Austria in the group of Professor Gerhard Holzapfel. I also visited the University of Berkeley, the Ohio State University and University of Delaware several times for shorter time periods.

When and why did you decide to pursue a career in science? Was that already decided when you started studying CompEng?
I would pose this question differently: It was not a decision, I had been wishing it, I was dreaming about it. When did I start to wish it? Long before the CompEng, long before I came to Germany. I wished to be a scientist since I was a child, maybe since the second or third class of primary school. I found the school and the possibility to continuously learn and (later on) to discover new things absolutely exciting.

To what extent has CompEng's international environment influenced you in your career planning? Has it influenced you in other aspects of your life?
The decision to study master course CompEng had a significant influence not only on my scientific career but also on my private life. It was the very first time that I was completely independent from my family and far away from all my friends. However, although we all were coming from different countries, the CompEng group has become homogeneous pretty fast. We were writing our homeworks together, organizing a dormitory-kino, visiting different cities in Germany and Europe. It was a nice time that we enjoyed together with the ComEng organization team. I use this opportunity to give my thanks to Professor Günther Schmid, who has been the initiator of the course and to Vera Feldhaus, Julia Lippmann and Jörg Sahlmen who were our contact persons at that time. Their continuous support was really precious to me and, I believe, to all CompEng students.

What is the research focus of your professorship? And what particularly fascinates you about your field of research?
The topic of my PhD thesis has been “Multiscale modeling of heterogeneous material”. This has been the main topic of my scientific work until today. The multiscale material modeling is a powerful technique that gives us an opportunity to go deeply into the material structure and to use the knowledge on very small length scales in order to exactly model and predict the material behavior at higher order scales. Possibilities to create the so-called representative volume element (RVE) for a material are in many cases countless. The only limitation is the imagination and, of course, the computer effort. The challenge to bring these two together is what fascinates me. My habilitation thesis has also dealt with the heterogeneous materials, however from another point of view: Here, I have been working on the numerical identification of material parameters on lower scales.

How does the knowledge you acquired in the CompEng program still help you today?
Answer: The knowledge which I acquired in the CompEng course is the indispensable basis for my scientific work today. All models we currently develop at my department rely on the rules of tensor algebra, principles from continuum mechanics and assumptions typical of the FEM. I am also very glad that I can pass on to my present students the knowledge I got during my Master's studies.

Do you have any tips for other female engineers? Have you had any particular challenges as a woman in engineering?
I have never considered the engineering as something related to a specific gender, women or men. Engineering is a quite a wide field with many different branches which are equally attractive to women and men. For example, if we speak of sustainable production, it is a topic that concerns everyone. I believe that this way of thinking is becoming more and more accepted.
For all young scientists, it is a great challenge to reconcile research work and family life. A good organization and a strong support by the family are necessary in order to combine these two aspects.
A word for the end: I am very happy that I decided to go to Germany and to study the ComEng master course. That has certainly been one of the most important decisions in my life.

I wish all present and future students of this course a lot of success in their further professional career!