Kevin D. Nielsen

Kevin D. Nielsen is a licensed professional engineer in Idaho and Montana. He holds a Ph.D. degree from the University of Iowa and M.S. and B.S. degrees from Utah State University. He has worked for CH2M HILL, which is now Jacobs, since and is the Global Technology Leader for Advanced Hydraulics and CFD. Kevin has extensive experience conducting hydraulic and hydrological analyses for water supply, hydroelectric power, irrigation, fish hatchery, river systems, wastewater, stormwater, and transportation projects. He is an expert in the detailed analysis of transients associated with pump stations and hydropower operations and in the application of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) for evaluating complex hydraulics. He has extensive experience conducting CFD and physical model hydraulic analyses for Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) and tunnel projects including the analysis of various drop shaft alternatives and major terminal pump stations. As a humanitarian service project, Kevin led the site identification, design, and manual labor construction of a small dam to provide irrigation and domestic water supply to a village in Kenya in 2011.

Kevin worked as a research engineer performing detailed physical hydraulic model studies at the Iowa Institute of Hydraulic Research (IIHR) from 1996 to 2000. He also provided guest lectures for graduate and undergraduate courses including Mechanics of Sediment Transport, Open Channel Flow, Project Design and Management, and Principles of Hydraulics. He worked as an associate professor at Carroll College in Helena Montana from 2000 to 2006 where he taught upper-level civil engineering courses in fluid mechanics, hydraulics, hydrology, environmental engineering, water, and wastewater treatment, senior project design, and engineering economics.