Astrid received her Ph.D. in Civil Engineering at the University of Stuttgart, Germany, and her B.S./M.S. in Civil Engineering also at the University of Stuttgart, Germany.
She studied civil engineering back in Germany, and was working on developing adaptive methods and algorithms for structural dynamics, for shape optimization, and mixed finite element methods. In 2000 I followed my husband to Boulder and left the finite element world, and engineering. In 2000 I started working at NCAR in the Atmosphere, Ionosphere, Magnetosphere section (AIM) section of the High Altitude Observatory. She mainly works with General Circulation Models (GCM) of the ionosphere, upper atmosphere, and electrodynamics, to update, further develop and couple them to other models.