Thomas Ruedas joined DTM last week as a Postdoctoral Associate. While at DTM, he will be investigating the evolution of the water content of the Martian mantle by numerically modeling mantle convection and melting for a substantial part of the planetary history of Mars. His earlier work has focused on melt production and crust formation at mid-oceanic ridges and in mantle plumes (with special attention being paid to Iceland) as well as the prediction of geophysical observables from numerical geodynamical models.