Horst H. Gerke is senior scientist and head of the Working Group “Hydropedology” (since 2018) with the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) Müncheberg, Germany, with research focussing on soil physics and soil hydrology. He earned a Diploma in Agriculture (1980) and a Ph.D. in forestry (1987), both from the University of Göttingen. He was postdoc at the Technical University of Braunschweig (1987-1989) and the U.S. Salinity Laboratory, USDA-ARS in Riverside, CA (1990-1992), vising scientist at the Earth and Environmental Sciences Department of the University of Waterloo, Canada (1996), earned a postdoctoral lecture qualification (Venia Legendi) in Environmental Sciences at the University of Cottbus (2004) and in Soil Science at the Agricultural Faculty of the University of Kiel (2015). He served the German Soil Science Society as Vice-Chair and Chair of “Commission I” Soil Physics (2002-2005) and as vice president (2012 - 2015). His main research interest is preferential flow and transport processes in structured and heterogeneous soils.