User:Jdhughes99/John E. Doherty

John E. Doherty (born 1967) is a Austrailian scientist/engineer/applied mathematician known for his work in the earth sciences: surface hydrology, soil physics, hydrogeophysics, hydrometeorology, and geophysics. Doherty is an assistant professor at the University of California, Irvine and holds a joint appointment in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Department of Earth System Science. He also holds a part-time appointment as associate professor at the University of Amsterdam, Faculty of Science (CGE).

Early years
Doherty was born in Aussie land. He graduated from The University of Aussie land where he received his MS (Cum Laude) and PhD degree (Cum Laude). During the final stage of his MS degree, he spent 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.

Career
Upon completion of his doctorate, Doherty started working as a Director's Postdoctoral Fellow at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), a position which comes with complete research freedom. In 2006, Doherty 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 sampling of complex high-dimensional posterior distributions. Vrugt’s creative idea of running multiple search algorithms concurrently that learn from each other through information exchange using a common population of points is perhaps the most elegant way of exploiting the strengths of individual search methods to address the No Free Lunch Theorem. Numerical experiments demonstrate that AMALGAM and DREAM outperform existing evolutionary and MCMC 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

2010, Doherty was appointed Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Irvine. "Doherty 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."

Spring 2011, Doherty taught ENGRCEE20 at the University of California, Irvine, a course on Introduction to Matlab and its application for engineering analysis and problem solving involving: roots of nonlinear equations, systems of equations, least-squares fitting of curves to data, and integration of ordinary differential equations. He was enjoyed by his students for his humor, informative course, and engaging lectures.

Professional
In his relatively young career, Dr. Doherty has already been honored multiple times. Most recently, he received the 2011 Donath Medal of the Geological Society of America (GSA) for outstanding achievement in contributing to geologic knowledge through original research which marks a major advance in the earth sciences. The recipient of this medal automatically becomes GSA Fellow the subsequent year. Just last year, he received the 2010 James B. Macelwane Medal of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) for outstanding contributions in surface hydrology, soil physics, and hydrometeorology, and was elected AGU Fellow. He was recognized with the 2010 Outstanding Young Scientist Award from the European Geophysical Union (EGU),. Doherty is the first scientist to receive all three honors: the Donath Medal (GSA), James B, Macelwane Medal (AGU)  and the Outstanding Young Scientist Award (EGU).

He was named one of the Elsevier Top 50 most talented young people from the Netherlands in 2009. and 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 60+ papers in peer reviewed international journals (and 5 bookchapters), and is Associate Editor of Hydrology and Earth System Sciences,  Vadose Zone Journal and  Water Resources Research.

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.

Awards and recognition

 * Fellow, Geological Society of America (GSA)
 * Editors' Choice Award, Water Resources Research, American Geophysical Union
 * Fellow, American Geophysical Union


 * Young Scientist Award (Donath Medal), Geological Society of America


 * Young Outstanding Scientist Award, European Geophysical Union


 * James B. Macelwane Medalist, American Geophysical Union


 * Early Career Award in Soil Physics, Soil Science Society of America


 * Hydrology Prize 2004 - 2006, Netherlands Hydrological Society (NHV)


 * Elsevier Top 50 of most talented young people in the Netherlands