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Juan Restrepo in office space

Juan Restrepo

Courtesy Faculty
Department of Mathematics

Juan Restrepo

Courtesy Faculty
Department of Mathematics

Biography

Professor of Mathematics, with courtesy appointments in Statistics, EECS, and Physical Oceanography.

Co-Director, Dynamics and Data Science Institute ( D2SI).

Diversity Advocate in the Sciences and Engineering for the College of Science. Training: theoretical physics (mathematics), electrical engineering, engineering acoustics, scientific computing.

Grants: Over $30M from NSF, DOE, NASA, GoMRI. Post-doctoral Training: U. Chicago/Argonne, and UCLA.

Awards: SIAM Fellow, SIAM Geoscience Career Award, ORISE Distinguished Post-doctoral Fellow, DOE Young Investigator Award.

Consulting/visiting appointments at: Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics, Aspen Institute of Theoretical Physics, Los Alamos, Argonne, NERSC/Norway, ICES/Texas, Rossby/Stockholm, SAMSI, IMA, MSRI, Maths Science Institute Warwick, Mathematical Sciences Institute, Oxford, Pacific Institute of Mathematical Sciences.

Journal Editorial Board: "Nonlinear Geophysics," European Geophysical Union, "Dynamics and Statistics of the Climate System," (Oxford).

Big Data and Information Analytics, AIMS Publications, Officer in Professional Societies: President 2019-2021, Nonlinear Geophysics Section, (American Geophysical Union), Chair, 2010-2014, Focus Group on Climate (American Physical Society), Vice-Chair (2015-2016) SIAM Geosciences.

Government Lab Experience: ANL, LANL. Industrial Experience: Financial and Engineering Consulting, and Owner and Chief Engineer, AEP Acoustics, LLC.

Research

Applied and computational mathematics, in two distinct research tracts:

(1) the application of statistical physics ideas, data sciences, and dynamics on probability distributions, to the understanding complex non-equilibrium physical and human systems and to the development of forecasting tools for these systems;

(2) the role of ocean and ocean transport in climate dynamics and in nearshore processes.

Example research problems in tract 1: resilience and uncertainty quantification in natural and human complex systems, using data and physical models. Adaptive time series methods for climate and financial data. Extreme/rare events. Dimension and uncertainty reduction in complex systems.

Example research problems in tract 2: oil spill dynamics, wave breaking dynamics, wave-generated transport, the role of oceans in global climate. Sediment dynamics. Outside of these tracts he has also done research on wavelets, bone dynamics, blood cell dynamics, public choice and elections, solitary waves, high performance computing.

Research Interests

Research at the Intersection of Data and Dynamics (in climate science and oceanography)

Education

Ph.D. Physics, Penn State, 1992

M.S., Engineering, Penn State, 1987

B.S., Music, New York University, 1983