Page 1

Michael J. Friedel, Ph.D.
Senior Scientist, Visiting and Adjunct Professor

email: mfriedel@usgs.gov; telephone: 303.236.7790

Home Page

Oveview: I have 25 years of international experience leading and participating on teams that characterize, monitor, and model the climatic, ecological, geophysical, and water-resource (quality and quantity in surface and ground water) response to natural and anthropogenic stresses. Because of limited information and nonuniqueness in these systems, I personally develop and apply computational methods to better characterize conceptual models and quantify their model and prediction uncertainty. In addition to collaborative problem solving, I enjoy writing and publishing technical articles, teaching university courses, providing workshops, and mentoring students. Curriculum Vitae

Work experience: U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Bureau of Mines, various universities, and international organizations.

Research experience: development and application of numerical models; improved estimation (or calibration), regularization, and validation approaches; and techniques to quantify model and predictive uncertainty.

Teaching experience: Colorado college, Hohai University, Universidade de Estadual Campinas, Universidade de Brasilia, Universidad de Centroamericana, University of Colorado, University of Kuopio; and various workshops

International experience: Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, China, El Salvador, Finland, Georgia, Guatemala, Haiti, Hungary, Israel, Jordan, Kyrgyz Republic, Mauritania, Palestine, Romania, Turkey; European Union, Middle East Peace Process, NATO security

Recognized expertise

Ecological methods and modeling - design, sampling, and monitoring of physical, chemical, and aquatic biological characteristics of streams; risk assessment
Flow and transport methods and modeling - water, heat, solute, reactive; surface water, ground water, surface-ground water, variably-saturated, unsaturated zone
Flood methods and modeling - water, sediment, debris; confined, unconfined, ungaged
Geophysical methods and modeling – borehole, ground, and airborne
Integrated studies – biologic, ecologic, geologic, geochemical, geomorphologic, geophysical, geotechnical, geostatistical, hydrologic, hydrogeologic
Inverse methods - calibration, fitting, joint, stochastic, uncertainty
Model development - analytical, discrete, coupled, numerical, stochastic
Risk evaluation - biological, ecological, earthquake, flooding, landslide
Resource assessments – biological, ecological, energy, mineral, water

Soft computing – artificial neural networks, genetic programming, self organizing maps, support vector machine

Statistical and uncertainty analysis – classical, multivariate, model, prediction
Teaching - seminars, workshops, courses
Team management - interdisciplinary, international