User:Jasper Vrugt

Jasper A. Vrugt (born Feb. 28, 1976) is a Dutch scientist/engineer specialized in model calibration and uncertainty quantification. Particularly, he has considerable experience with the development of optimization and uncertainty analysis methods that analyze the mismatch between models and data for individual error sources to improve theory, understanding and predictability of environmental systems. These methods merge the strengths of evolutionary principles, Bayesian statistics, sequential data assimilation, and high performance computing. Most of Vrugt's work is within the context of surface hydrology and soil physics, but applications and published papers span the fields of (but not limited to) ecology, hydrogeophysics, hydrometeorology, and geophysics.

Vrugt received his MS (Cum Laude) and PhD degree (Cum Laude) from the University of Amsterdam. During his MS study he spent about 6 months at the University of California, Davis to work with Jan Hopmans, a world leading soil physicist. This work led to the development of two- and three-dimensional root water uptake models, and was one of the first vadose zone modeling inverse modeling studies that used a three-dimensional description of the subsurface for parameter estimation using distributed computing. His PhD was completed under supervision of Drs. Willem Bouten and Koos Verstraten. In this period he spent about 1.5 years at the University of Arizona, Tucson to work with Drs. Hoshin Gupta and Soroosh Sorooshian two world experts in parameter / state estimation of hydrologic systems.

In March 2005, Vrugt started working as a Director's Postdoctoral Fellow at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), and in November 2006, Vrugt was appointed as J. Robert Oppenheimer (JRO) distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow, also at LANL. Two main contributions during his JRO appointment include a novel concept of self-adaptve multimethod evolutionary optimization for single and multiple objective parameter estimation, and an adaptive Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) scheme (DREAM) for posterior inference. Numerical experiments demonstrate that AMALGAM and DREAM outperform existing evolutionary approaches. These methods are especially designed to take maximum advantage of distributed computing facilities, and are currently being applied to a wide range of inference problems

Starting Jan. 1, 2010 Vrugt will join the University of California, Irvine as assistant professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering. Vrugt is the first hire at UC-Irvine for the new Environmental Institute initiative, which will bring together scientists from different domains to identify new research needed for an improved understanding of society's response to a changing climate, and for environmental science to better respond to societal needs.

Vrugt recently received the 2010 Outstanding Young Scientist Award from the European Geophysical Union (EGU), and was named one of the Elsevier Top 50 most talented young people from the Netherlands in 2009. He received an Early Career Award in Soil Physics from the Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) in 2007, the Hydrology Prize 2004-2006 from the Dutch Hydrological Society (NHV) in 2007 , and a J. Robert Oppenheimer Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship from LANL in 2006. He has published 50+ papers in peer reviewed international journals (and 5 bookchapters), and is Associate Editor of Water Resources Research, Vadose Zone Journal and Hydrology and Earth System Sciences. He is on the Editorial Board of Environmental Modeling & Software, and Guest-editor (with Shlomo P. Neuman) for a special issue in Vadose Zone Journal (issue 5, pp. 915-989) on Parameter Identification and Uncertainty Assessment in the Unsaturated Zone.

--Jasper Vrugt 8 nov 2009 19:00 (CET)