American Society of Civil Engineers Recognizes Sorooshian as Distinguished Member
April 30, 2026 - The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has honored UC Irvine Distinguished Professor Soroosh Sorooshian with inclusion into its 2026 class of distinguished members. Sorooshian is a Henry Samueli Endowed Chair in engineering and founding director of the UCI Center for Hydrometeorology and Remote Sensing. He is one of 12 researchers to receive the recognition this year, the highest honor reserved for ASCE fellows and members who represent the most accomplished civil engineers in the profession.
Sorooshian was selected for his pioneering groundbreaking and practical work on surface hydrology and remote sensing of precipitation and his cooperation in mentoring that has trained engineers and researchers and substantially advanced the field of water resources engineering.
Sorooshian’s research contributions are in three main areas: development of a new generation of calibration and optimization methods for hydrological modeling and flood forecasting; new interdisciplinary integration of hydrometeorology and space science through development of machine learning algorithms and application of remote sensing to develop new data products for hydrology and water resource management; and hydroclimatology.
He is an internationally recognized leader in the development of mathematical calibration methodologies for river flow and forecasting models as needed by the hydrological services of the world. Sorooshian was the first to introduce stochastic maximum likelihood parameter estimation methods in hydrologic modeling, providing groundbreaking insights into model identifiability and observability and creating a new area of research that many followed. His development of the shuffled complex evolution, or SCE-UA, global optimization algorithm, with his former student and colleague Q. Duan and H. Gupta revolutionized hydrologic modeling and is now the optimization algorithm of choice in many fields.
Sorooshian is also well-known for the PERSIANN system, (precipitation estimation from remotely sensed information using artificial neural networks). The value of the PERSIANN precipitation estimation system has been demonstrated in river flow forecasting and in producing a real-time, 4-kilometer spatial resolution satellite rainfall product for hydrologic and meteorological services, with continuous updating every 30 minutes.
“It is a great honor to be selected as a Distinguished Member of ASCE,” said Sorooshian. “I am deeply grateful to my former students and collaborators over the years, whose contributions have made this recognition possible.”
Sorooshian is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and is chair of the Rosenberg International Forum on Water Policy within the University of California. Other honors include the AGU 2024 Walter Langbein Lecture and 2025 Bowie Medal; the 2023 Doctor Honoris Causa from the University de Montpellier; Hagler Fellow of the University of Texas, College Park; member of International Academy of Astronautics; The World Academy of Sciences; Foreign member, European Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Sciences; the ASCE’s 2017 Ven Te Chow Award. He is an honorary member and hydrological medalist with the American Meteorological Society (AMS) and was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
ASCE will honor Sorooshian and the 2026 distinguished members at the 2026 OPAL Gala, Thursday, October 15 in Reston, Virginia.
– Lori Brandt
