Soroosh Sorooshian, Ph.D., NAE, Dist.M.ASCE, a distinguished professor, Henry Samueli Chair, and founding director of the Center for Hydrometeorology and Remote Sensing at the University of California, Irvine, has been honored with inclusion by ASCE in its 2026 class of distinguished members. Sorooshian, whose position is with the civil and environmental engineering and earth system science departments at UC Irvine, was selected for pioneering groundbreaking and practical work on surface hydrology and remote sensing of precipitation and his unselfish cooperation in mentoring that has trained engineers and researchers and substantially advanced the field of water resources engineering.
ASCE will honor Sorooshian and the 2026 distinguished members at the 2026 OPAL Gala, Thursday, Oct. 15 in Reston, Virginia.
Sorooshian’s research contributions can be grouped into 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 more generally.
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 than 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.
Some selected honors are his 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; foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences; the ASCE-EWRI Seminal Paper Award for 2023; and ASCE’s 2017 Ven Te Chow Award. Sorooshian is an honorary member and hydrological medalist with the American Meteorological Society and was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
He is the current chair of the Rosenberg International Forum on Water Policy within the University of California.
In 2003, Sorooshian was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for the development of flood forecasting models used worldwide in hydrologic services.
Nominations for the 2027 class are due Dec. 15. Email [email protected] for more information.
