Meet ZIWR's newest faculty member, Dr. Scott K. Hansen, who joined the institute this past March :
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Initially from Toronto, I obtained all my academic credentials in Canada, including an MSc in Mathematics from the University of Toronto and a PhD from Queen's University, where I studied contaminant hydrogeology under the supervision of Bernie Kueper.
After receiving my doctorate in 2012, I travelled to Israel to do a postdoc with Brian Berkowitz at the Weizmann Institute. There, I worked primarily on modelling of non-Fickian solute transport and reactive transport, also developing interests in mobile-immobile mass transfer and scientific computing. In 2015, I moved to the United States to do a second postdoc in the Computational Earth Science group at Los Alamos National Laboratory, working with Monty Vesselinov. At LANL I worked on a number of projects, including leading development of CHROTRAN, a simulator for bio-reduction of heavy metals. I also published a number of papers on inverse problems and model calibration and developed a new type of single-well tracer test for the estimation of subsurface heterogeneity.
Recently, I moved to Midreshet Ben-Gurion with my wife and two twin boys to launch my own research group at the Zuckerberg Institute. Research interests are numerous but include the effect of model error on prediction accuracy, use of machine learning to discover predictive relationships and calibrate error envelopes for said predictions, predicting the effect of velocity field heterogeneity on reactive solute transport, and development of the Aurora software.
Outside of work, I have a longstanding interest in experimental and electronic music, and hosted a radio show with this theme for several years on CFRC, the Queen's University station. Other interests include interactive fiction and philosophy, particularly the philosophy of science.
More information on Dr. Hansen can be found here.
