Alexander Prechtel

Dr. Alexander Prechtel is an Academic Councillor at the Chair of Applied Mathematics I at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU), where he has been working since 2005. He serves as the representative of academic mid-level staff in the Department of Mathematics since 2010 and previously worked as the new construction officer for the department from 2008-2012. His research focuses on mathematical modeling in geosciences, particularly soil structure formation, reactive transport in porous media, and natural attenuation processes.

Prechtel earned his Dipl.-Math. from the University of Bayreuth in 1997 with a minor in Geoecology focusing on hydrology, followed by a DEA in Hydrology and Geochemistry from École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris in 1998. He completed his Dr. rer. nat. in Mathematics at FAU in 2005 under Prof. Dr. P. Knabner with a dissertation on hydrogeochemical multicomponent transport problems.

His research interests span mathematics in geosciences and natural sciences, with specific focus on structure formation in soils, modeling and simulation of reactive mass transport in porous media, evaluation of natural self-cleaning power of soils, and efficient solution methods for hydrogeochemical multicomponent models. Recent work has concentrated on soil microaggregates, particularly in the rhizosphere, and the carbon turnover processes associated with soil structure dynamics. He has made significant contributions to developing mechanistic models that explicitly represent pore structures derived from CT scans to study self-organization of soil aggregates.

His publication record shows a clear progression toward increasingly sophisticated multiscale modeling approaches, with recent papers focusing on pore-scale interactions between roots, soil structure, and carbon dynamics. The research demonstrates how exudates like mucilage play a crucial role in soil structure formation in the rhizosphere, with persistent stabilization effects even after the exudates themselves have decomposed.

Prechtel has successfully secured substantial research funding, with third-party funding volume as PI/Co-PI since 2015 totaling approximately 1.176 million euros. He has supervised numerous Bachelor's, Master's, and Diplom theses across mathematics, technomathematics, and Integrated Life Sciences programs. His teaching portfolio includes courses on differential equation models, metabolic networks, and groundwater modeling.

As a reviewer, he serves for the Agence Nationale de Recherche in France and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), and contributes to multiple prestigious journals including BioSystems, Environmental Science & Technology, Geoderma, and Water Resources Research.