Vrugt Named to Highly Cited List

Vrugt was named to the who's who of influential researchers list based on the large number of his papers that rank in the top 1% by citation.

Jan. 16, 2020 - Jasper Vrugt, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, was named to the 2019 Highly Cited Researchers global list by Web of Science group. The recognition is given to researchers who distinguish themselves by publishing a large number of papers that rank in the top 1% by citation for their field and year of publication, demonstrating significant research influence among their peers.

The methodology that determines the who’s who of influential researchers draws on data and analysis performed by bibliometric experts from the Institute for Scientific Information at the Web of Science Group.

Vrugt‘s research involves understanding how complex systems work, behave, calculate and respond to control inputs. He is developing a new modeling paradigm in which a macroscopic behavior follows logically from microscopic laws and generalizations. He regularly develops new numerical, computational, statistical and optimization approaches to reconcile complex system models with observations for the purpose of learning and discovery.

His publications span numerous fields: agriculture, biogeosciences, computational science, ecology, engineering, geomorphology, geophysics, hydrology, hydropower, soil science and statistics.

Vrugt, who has been on the Samueli School faculty since 2010, is a fellow of the Geological Society of America and the American Geophysical Union. He has won numerous awards, including the James B. Macelwane Medal from the AGU, the Outstanding Young Scientist Award from the European Geosciences Union and the 2010 Top 50 Most Talented Young People from the Netherlands. He is also the recipient of the Early Career Award in Soil Physics from the Soil Science Society of America and the Hydrology Prize from the Dutch Hydrological Society. 

This year’s list includes 6,217 highly cited researchers in various fields from nearly 60 countries, including 2,737 from the United States. Vrugt is one of 14 UC Irvine researchers named this year.

- Anna Lynn Spitzer