M&A’s Wickham Wins GRA Award

Montgomery & Associates is pleased to announce that Patrick Wickham, P.G., Hydrogeologist in the Pasadena office, was honored with the Emerging Groundwater Professional Award at the Western Groundwater Congress held recently in San Diego. The award, established by Groundwater Resources Association of California (GRA) in 2022, recognizes active GRA members less than 35 years of age who have been in the industry fewer than 10 years and are significant contributors to GRA’s vision of sustainable groundwater for all.

Patrick joined Montgomery & Associates in 2019 and specializes in groundwater modeling and machine learning applications. He has played an important role in groundwater sustainability planning and implementation across California, having worked on several groundwater sustainability plans (GSPs) and annual reports. He has developed innovative modeling tools and applications to enhance groundwater sustainability agency (GSA) decision making on projects and management actions. His work has included development of Machine Learning Guided Optimization (MLGO!) of numerical groundwater model simulations to improve regional water supply while achieving groundwater sustainability.

Cameron Tana, P.E., Principal Hydrologist and California Operations Manager, and Lisa Porta, P.E., Principal Water Resources Engineer and California Water Strategy Lead, said of Patrick in their nomination for this award:

Patrick is a diligent and passionate hydrogeologist who consistently delivers high quality work. He contributes at M&A and to the GRA community, actively promoting GRA and starting to mentor students and others interested in working in the water industry. He is a great communicator of technical science and works on each task with integrity. He is a key member of M&A’s modeling team, advancing novel techniques and methods, coaching younger staff, and supporting Project Managers with task leadership.

Patrick serves as president of GRA’s Southern California Branch and a subject matter expert for the California Board for Professional Engineers, Land Surveyors, and Geologists.

M&A is a longtime supporter and annual sponsor of GRA. For information on M&A’s services in California, please visit our website or contact Lisa.

Lisa Porta poses with Patrick Wickham after presenting him with GRA’s Emerging Groundwater Professional Award.

Accepting his award, Patrick gives a speech to the audience.