Jasper Alexander Vrugt

Roles:
Author, Reviewer, Section Editor

Affiliation:

• • Civil and Environmental Engineering
  • University of California Irvine
  • United States

Biography

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Education

Ph.D. Faculty of Science, University of Amsterdam, 6/29/2004, Cum Laude.

M.S. Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of Amsterdam, 8/15/1999, Cum Laude.

Employment (University of California Irvine, USA)

Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE), 2022--Present
Associate Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE), 2015-2022
Associate Professor (Joint Appointment), Earth System Science (ESS), 2015-2020
Assistant Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE), 2010-2015
Assistant Professor (Joint Appointment), Earth System Science (ESS), 2010-2015

Employment (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)

Associate Professor (0.2 FTE), Faculty of Science (CGE), 2011-2014

Employment (Los Alamos National Laboratory, USA)

J. Robert Oppenheimer (JRO) Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship, 12/06 -12/09
Director's Postdoctoral Fellowship, 3/05 -11/06

Honors, Awards & Fellowships

Highly Cited Researcher, Clarivate Web of Science, 2018 \& 2019
Professor of the Year (UCI@CEE Teaching Award), 2015
Sir Frederick McMaster Fellowship, Australia (CSIRO), 2012
Fellow, Geological Society of America (GSA), 2012
Editors' Choice Award, Water Resources Research (AGU), 2011
Donath Medal, Geological Society of America (GSA), 2011
James B. Macelwane Medal, American Geophysical Union (AGU), 2010
Outstanding Young Scientist Award, European Geosciences Union (EGU), 2010
Fellow, American Geophysical Union (AGU), 2010
Top 50 of Most Talented Young People From the Netherlands (Elsevier), 2009
Early Career Award in Soil Physics, Soil Science Society of America (SSSA), 2007
Hydrology Prize 2004 - 2006, Dutch Hydrological Society (NHV), 2007
J. Robert Oppenheimer Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship (LANL), 2006
Director's Postdoctoral Fellowship (LANL), 2005
Graduated with Cum Laude for Ph.D. degree (UvA), 2004
Dutch National Science Foundation Travel Grant (NWO), 2001 \& 2002
Graduated with Cum Laude for M.S. degree (UvA), 1999

Research Interests

My research interests are in natural and human-made (engineered) Earth and environmental systems. We combine mathematics, statistics, and physics with computational methods (mathematical modeling, machine learning, information theory), to unlock the underlying mechanisms that govern the dynamic behavior and evolution of such systems and their responses to external influences (natural boundary conditions) and perturbations induced by human activity. Some of the key questions we attempt to address are, (i) why do our theories deviate from data? (ii) how do we diagnose, detect and resolve epistemic errors? (iii) how do we properly quantify uncertainty in models and experimental data, (iv) what is an appropriate model complexity?, (v) what information in the data is meaningful and how do we extract such information (so-called signatures)?

Statistics formally addresses uncertainty stemming from sample-to-sample variability within a generative stochastic model. But what are the implications if this model is wrong? This issue of model misspecification is rarely confronted in current practice, yet epistemic errors are crucial to learning and scientific discovery. They drive hypothesis testing, model refinement, and the continual advancement of knowledge.

Publications

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