Dr. Jason DeJong is a Professor at the University of California, Davis. Jason is the Director of the NSF NHERI Center for Geotechnical Modeling and the UC Davis lead for the NSF ERC Center for Bio-mediated and Bio-inspired Geotechnics. Prof. DeJong’s major technical achievements have been in the areas soil and site characterization, earthquake engineering, biogeotechnics, and geotechnical sustainability. Jason has developed or refined several in situ, laboratory, and modeling tools as well as data quality and correction methods, to improve the characterization of difficult soils – soft sediments, intermediate soils, tailings, and gravelly soils. At the project scale he created an integrated site characterization framework for practice to develop a hypothesis-driven program which streamlines and optimizes industry work, with the goal of cost-efficient and optimized designs that are not excessively conservative and over-designed. Results from his research program have been disseminated through more than 250 publications and his contributions have been recognized through numerous ASCE, ASTM, and ICE awards. Jason is actively engaged with industry in implementing research advancements into practice and serving as a technical reviewer for large infrastructure projects.