Prof. P.A. Ty Ferré visited the Forschunsgzentrum Jülich in May 2016

Prof. P.A. Ty Ferré is a full professor in the department of Hydrology and Water Resources at the University of Arizona. He was elected as the Darcy lecturer of the National Groundwater Association for the year 2016. Within this lecture series, I invited Ty Ferré to present his work on ‘Seeing things differently: Rethinking the relationship between data, models, and decision-making’. More information about the Darcy lecture series can be found on the following website: http://www.ngwa.org/foundation/darcy/pages/current-darcy-lecturer.aspx. Ty Ferré gave presentations at the Institute of Bio- & Geosciences, Agrosphere, IBG-3 of the Forschungszentrum Jülich (May, 19th) and at the Institute of Geophysics and Meteorology of Cologne University (May, 20th).

Ty Ferré studied Geophysical Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines and received his Ph.D. from the University of Waterloo in the Department of Earth Science. In his recent research, he has focused on the direct coupling of hydrologic and geophysical models to interpret geophysical data in a hydrological context. In addition, he developed multi-model methods that use multiple data sources to constrain models which support decision-making for pure scientific questions as well as in applied hydrological studies. Currently, Ty Ferré and his group connect multi-model decision and measurement optimization tools with hydrogeophysical investigations to efficiently integrate geophysical data into a hydrological context.

On Thursday, May, 19, 2016 we welcomed Ty Ferré at the IBG-3 to show him the laboratories we use for Spectral Induced Polarization (SIP) experiments and discussed the measurement tools, recent improvements, and ideas to bring the method from the lab to the field. Thereafter, two PhD students in Hydrology and Geophysics discussed their work in great detail and Ty Ferre gave valuable information and ideas to specific questions. The actual Darcy lecture of Prof. Ty Ferré dealt with forward and inverse modeling in a broader sense such that a broad audience could benefit from the ideas and stimulating information. For the remainder of the day, Cluster B6 (part of TR32) discussed recent and ongoing work and I had the chance to present Ty Ferré with the results from my recently submitted Ph.D. thesis.

The visionary and enlightening talk was also given at the Geophysical and Meteorological Institute on May, 20, 2016 in front of the TR32 members and was open for further guests. For example, Zlatko Mikulič (President of the International Association of Hydrogeologists Slovene Committee) and Bülent Tezkan (Head of the Geophysical Institute of Cologne University) were prominent attendees and were actively involved in the lively discussion which followed the talk. In Ty Ferré’s own words: “I found both Jülich and Köln to be excellent stops!” and I found his visit just as superb and fruitful for my recent and ongoing work.

Prof. P.A. Ty Ferré was invited by Christian von Hebel