FM Diversion Conference Presenters

Kristen Almen has worked with ASN Constructors for two years. Her current role with the company includes coordinating permanent seeding operations and erosion and sediment control compliance. She is also the Resiliency Program Coordinator, which involves data collection and reporting. Prior to this position, she worked at South Dakota State University. She obtained a master's degree from North Dakota State University in 2020. She lives in Fargo and has a border collie named Delta.

Kris Bakkegard, P.E., became the Metro Flood Diversion Authority's first director of engineering in July 2020. He previously worked for 25 years at KLJ as a civil engineer and engineering group manager, leading a team of 200 staff members. His experience includes design and project management for bridges, roads, and flood control projects. Bakkegard is a military veteran, having served eight years as a combat engineer in the North Dakota Army National Guard. He holds a civil engineering degree from North Dakota State University and resides in Fargo, North Dakota, with his family.

Aaron Carranza, P.E., CFM, has served the Department of Water Resources (formerly the Office of the State Engineer) over the last almost 14 years. Since 2017, Aaron has overseen the Department’s Regulatory Division which includes the Construction and Drainage permitting and management programs, Sovereign Lands management program, North Dakota’s Dam Safety program, USACE Silver Jackets program, and FEMA’s CTP and CAP-SSSE programs. Aaron also currently serves as Chair on the Association of State Floodplain Manager’s Board of Directors.

Aaron is a registered Professional Engineer and Certified Floodplain Manager.

Derek Ingvalson has been a biologist with the St. Paul District since 2010. He has been involved with various aspects of the Fargo-Moorhead Metropolitan Area Flood Risk Management Project since 2016, as both the project’s environmental manager as well as a project manager. Derek oversees environmental compliance, permitting, impact analysis, environmental review, monitoring, mitigation design and implementation, and agency coordination on the project. Derek’s involvement with environmental mitigation on the FMM Project will result in over 1,400 acres of wetland, 300 acres of forest, the incorporation of fish passage at the last unmodified dam on the Red River, and the restoration of several miles of habitat on the Sheyenne River within the Fargo-Moorhead Area.

SeokKoo Kang, Ph.D. earned his PhD from the St. Anthony Falls Laboratory at the University of Minnesota in 2010. Following this, he spent two years at the same institution as a Research Associate. In 2013, he joined Hanyang University in South Korea as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2019. His primary research areas include computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling of environmental flows and flood modeling utilizing high-performance computing (HPC). Among his notable achievements are the development of the Virtual Flow Simulator, an open-source, parallel CFD model, and a parallel flood simulation model, both capable of handling hundreds of millions of grid points on supercomputers.

Katey Levihn has more than 30 years of construction, engineering, environmental, quality assurance, funding and project/program management experience in both the private and public sectors, mostly in the United States, but just prior to this project in Saudi Arabia. Her environmental experience includes NEPA documentation and field work on projects ranging in size from smaller specialized projects to a large Superfund site; coordination between local, state, federal and Tribal agencies; and leading development of a Ukrainian specialized grouting technology transfer from the mining sector in Ukraine to the environmental sector in the United States. She has previous experience on several P3 projects in Idaho and Texas.

Matt Lueker began working at the University of Minnesota – St. Anthony Falls Laboratory (SAFL) as an undergraduate student and was hired full time in 2005. His work and expertise are primarily related to physical modeling of hydraulic structures and the development and deployment of unique instrumentation systems for hydraulics and wind energy studies. He also supports basic research and education for SAFL and other institutions through SAFL’s fabrication services program. Matt thoroughly enjoys following the full-scale construction and use of hydraulic structures he has been part of in the modelling phase of design.

Zac McEachran, Ph.D. is a hydrologist and catchment scientist at the NOAA National Weather Service. His research focuses on using advanced physics based and machine learning modeling tools to help understand the fundamental physical processes of how streamflow is generated at the catchment scale. He is particularly interested in creating feedbacks between developing better operational environmental forecasts and better understanding of catchment processes.

Karen Ryberg, Ph.D. is the Deputy Director for Hydrologic Networks for U.S. Geological Survey Dakota Water Science Center. Previously, she was a Research Statistician. Her research interests include the effect of climate variability and change on streamflow and water quality; nonstationarity in peak streamflow and more broadly in other types of data; and water-quality trend analysis, particularly pesticide trend analysis in surface water. Ryberg is a member of the Advisory Committee for the ND Water Resources Research Institute.

Jenny Sheets is the founder of Discover Outdoors, a social design consulting company aimed at strengthening human connections, ideally outdoors. She grew up in Fargo, North Dakota and spent 15 years in the mountains of Bozeman, Montana. She recently returned to the Fargo-Moorhead community with her husband and three-year-old son. When she's not strategizing and designing social infrastructure, she can be found trail running, biking, writing, and enjoying local restaurants.

Miguel Wong, Ph.D., has expertise in management of multidisciplinary teams, hydrologic modeling, hydraulic design, and river mechanics analysis. His more than 25 years of experience in engineering consulting and design, as well as applied research, have involved managing large, complex, fast-track projects and dealing with public and private stakeholders. His work has included performing and managing senior independent quality reviews of engineering projects; leading the planning and design of dam rehabilitation as well as flood-risk-reduction projects (including the Fargo-Moorhead diversion project); completing hydrological assessments of extreme storm and flood events; designing all types of hydraulic structures; conducting physical and numerical modeling of sediment transport processes in rivers; and leading hydraulic and geotechnical analysis and design for transportation-related projects.