When HEC hired me to add sediment transport to HEC-RAS almost 20 years ago now, I inherited a set of sediment transport functions that were mostly developed in the early to mid 20th century. These were – and continue to be – important equations. But when I sat down with the RAS team To talk about the new science I was excited to include in a river …

Dr. Power is a food web ecologist at UC Berkeley, where she leads the Power lab which has compiled careful, long term data sets in the Angelo Reserve in Northern CA. In addition to her early work, in Panama and the Ozarks - which we touch on briefly - Dr. Power’s multi-decadal data sets on the Eel River, have yielded remarkable findings about how f…

Dr Alain Recking has quantified gravel bed transport with just about all the tools available to our discipline. In addition to substantial field work- Dr. Recking has done some important and influential flume experiments. We have talked and will talk about hiding and armoring quite a bit in this podcast, because they are difficult ideas, that are h…

A couple years ago, my agency asked me to write some guidance on sediment modeling, so, I reached out to the morphological modelers I knew, and particularly the model developers who write the morphological model code other people use. I asked them about the common failure modes they have seen and best practices they teach, and realized we had all e…

I’ve heard people call Tony the godfather of Sediment Transport Modeling and - as you’ll hear in our conversation - he very well may be the first person to use a computer to answer an engineering scale sediment question. But most people about my age and older, know Tony for developing the first generalized sediment model. He was part of the origina…

Dr. Jim Selegean is the Sediment Transport Specialist at the Corps Detroit District where he studies the rivers and sediment loads into the great lakes as well as inland costal processes. He is also a professor at Wayne State in Detroit. And that joint position has helped him mentor many young scientists and engineers throughout the years, geomorph…

Dr. Astrid Blom is a professor Civil Engineering & Geosciences at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands is perhaps best known for her recent reach and rive scale work, modeling hundreds of kilometers, sometimes for hundreds or thousands of years. These models explore the long-term equilibrium state of river responses to human modificati…

In the previous episode, we talked to Dr. Marcelo Garcia about the astonishing compilation of sediment science he edited, the ASCE Sedimentation Manual. In this episode, we turn to some of his work, covering a wide range of topics, but landing for a while on sedimentation hazards including mud and debris flows, the Bulle Effect, and two transport p…

Dr. Marcelo Garcia holds an endowed chair in Hydraulics at the University of Illinois-Urbana – where he has taught for more than thirty years, and runs the remarkable Ven Te Chow hydraulic and sediment laboratory. His award page reads like a who’s-who of the Legends in our field. These include but are not limited to: The Einstein Award, the Rouse A…

Dr. David Montgomery has been so prolific, that for several years I actually thought he was two people: First, Dr. D. Montgomery is a well known geomorphologist from the University of Washington (and a 2008 MacArthur Fellow) whose name is on much of the seminal, high-gradient channel transport and classification literature. And then there David Mon…

We plan to start releasing season three on the first week of the new year. It was a fun and helpful season, which I'm looking forward to releasing. This preview overviews the guests and topics of the season with fun pull quotes from most of the guests. Look for the next episode the first week of January. This series was funded by the Regional Sedim…

Jennifer Bountry leads the Sedimentation and River Hydraulics Branch of the US Bureau of Reclamation's Technical Service Center in Denver, CO where she helped to coordinate and draft an interagency guidance document on scaling sediment transport analyses to the project risk. It is a helpful and important document that I recommend to any group movin…

In the first two episodes of this season Dr. Annandale and Dr. Morris talked about reservoir sediment management practices all over the world. But examples in the continental US were noticeably absent. Reservoir sediment management in the US has encountered some challenges that have made US agencies slow to adopt these practices. But Dr. Paul Boyd …

Dr. Greg Morris wrote the first text on reservoir sediment management, which generated the categories and set the parameters for a lot of the work and conversations surrounding the topic in the last three decades. Most of us who work in this field got our start with his Reservoir Sedimentation Handbook. But he has also likely worked on more reservo…

Dr. George Annandale has been advocating for forward thinking about global water supply for decades...which is more connected to sedimentation processes than you might imagine. In his book, Quenching the Thirst he makes the case that reservoir sedimentation is one of the major challenges to future water supply and managing sediment at new and exist…

The RSM River Mechanics Podcast is returning with a summer mini-season on reservoir sediment management. We recorded four episodes on this topic with some remarkable guests, so we're running them together this summer as a shorter "Season 2" before we release a full season this fall. Episodes include: Ep 2:1 – Dr. George Annandale on the Motivation,…

We are wrapping up season 1 with the second half of our first interview. This is the rest of my conversation with US Army Corps of Engineers River Mechanics and River Engineering Subject-Matter Expert, Dr. David Biedenharn. If you have feedback on this season, recommendations for season 2 guests, or want to weigh in on our classic paper survey, the…

The regressive erosion on the Rio Coca (Ecuador) may be the morphological event of our generation. But, because it happened in February 2020, when there was not much room in the news cycle, most people haven't heard about it...even in the geomorph community. In this episode we try to rectify that. I talked to Pablo Espinoza Giron and Pedro David Ba…

Dr. Richard Iverson led the mud and debris flow investigations at the USGS Cascade Volcano Observatory for years, including large scale flume and numerical work that unlocked a remarkable number of new insights about these high-concentration flows. His findings have influenced the way I think about these events more than any other source. With the …

Dr. Katie Brutsche led the Regional Sediment Management Program for several years. Regional Sediment Management is the "RSM" in the title of this podcast, and the reason this project exists. RSM is the aspirational conceptual model of the Corps of Engineer's sediment management over the last couple decades. We talk about the principles of RSM, the …

I recently described Chris Nygaard as the Corps’ BSPS, our 'Big Sediment Pulse Specialist.' He led sediment analysis and modeling on the Corps’ latest evaluation of Mount Saint Helens downstream-sediment impacts and a dam removal alternative on the Snake River. In those projects he analyzed the fate of sediment pulses (real or hypothetical) on the …

We plan to occasionally push out short bonus episodes between our longform conversations. This first bonus short is a conversation with two of the organizers of the Federal Interagency Sediment Conference, which will be in St Louis in May. SEDHYD is a conference that specializes in applied river mechanics and engineering topics, and has a lot of ov…

John Remus leads a team of Corps of Engineers, sediment and river engineering, subject-matter experts. This team (which I like to call "the Sediment Avengers") deploys to the Corps' most problematic sediment and morphological challenges around the country. And that's a fitting role for the man who manages the river sometimes called the "Big Muddy."…

Dr. Joanna Curran is probably best know for her early, academic, laboratory work on step-pool systems, gravel cluster turbulence, and the Wilcock and Crowe transport function. But she has since worked on northwestern rivers with several engineering firms, and most recently joined the Corps of Engineers at the Seattle District. This academic/private…

Ron Copeland has worked for the Corps of Engineers for over 5 decades, 52 years at the Los Angeles district and the Corps' Coastal and Hydraulics lab in Vicksburg Mississippi. He also worked for 10 years as a principle engineer at Mobile Boundary Hydraulics, which was the premiere 1D sediment transport modeling firm for decades. But Dr. Copeland ha…

Molly Wood is the National Sediment Specialist for the USGS Water Resources Mission Area’s Observing Systems Division. She develops policies and methods for measuring fluvial sediment transport and for computing streamflow using complex rating techniques. She also teaches national and international training courses on surface-water and sediment dat…

Dr. David Biedenharn is a river mechanics, subject matter expert, with the Corps of Engineer's Coastal and Hydraulic Laboratory. He is a professional engineer with over forty years of experience in hydraulics, river engineering, sedimentation, channel restoration, and fluvial geomorphology. Dr. Biedenharn also teaches in the Tulane Department of Sc…

This is a preview of the RSM River Mechanics Podcast, which features conversations about sediment, river processes, and fluvial geomorphology. The trailer includes excerpts from several of the Season 1 guests. This series was funded by the Regional Sediment Management (RSM) program. Stanford Gibson (HEC Sediment Specialist) hosts. Mike Loretto edit…

Bernhard Fragener is the Founder & CEO of GlobeAir, one of the biggest private jet companies in Europe.

Finn is the Founder & CEO of Sanity Groupm a startup that focuses on building Cannabis products for health- and lifestyle purposes. In this episode, we dive into Finn's story and why he thinks Cannabis will be one of the next big things in Germany once it's legalised. If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on App…

Felix is the Founder & CEO of GoStudent, a startup that's worth over 1,7 billion $ with over 1,000 employees. In this episode, we dive into Felix's story and how he was able to build one of the most successful ed-tech startups on this planet. If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It tak…

Daniel Dippold is an entrepreneur from Germany. He has founded multiple tech ventures and has been named a top talent under 25. With EWOR he has built a global platform making the process of founding and leading a venture easier and more accessible. In addition to that he also is a frequent advisor to governments and large corporations. In our conv…

Vojtech Holub and Sebastian Asprella are the Co-founders and CO-CEOs of Think Orbital. The company aspires to provide scalable infrastructure to help people flying to low Earth orbit. Their mission is to develop the technologies for assembly of large pressure vessels in space and apply these technologies to build large and scalable space stations w…

Tom Kelly and Richard Joyce are two of the four Co-Founders of EVONA. The company specializes in international space industry recruiting. This means to help space companies around the world to find talented team members and job-seekers to land the space industry jobs of their dreams. In our conversation we talk about how they have built the company…

Michael Perschke is the Ex CEO of Audi India and the luxury supercar company Automobili Pininfarina. Currently he serves as a Board Member of multiple startups and as an Investor for EV car companies. In our conversation we dive into his personal story and what made him even get into the automotive industry. We also touch base on his current activi…

David Aaker is a recognized authority on branding. He has developed several recognizable concepts and has received numerous awards for his contributions to the science of marketing. He is a professor, serves as Vice Chairman at Prophet, a global growth consultancy and has written and published 18 books as well as hundreds of articles around this to…

Doug Winter is the Founder and CEO of Seismic, the industry-leading sales enablement and marketing orchestration solution currently doing $200M in revenue with about 1000 employees and offices all around the world. In our conversation we talk about his story including the failure of the first start-up he was involved in and some other challenges he…

Michael Altendorf is the founder and CEO of Adtelligence and an angel investor in a lot of different start-ups. Adtelligence is a leading German software and technology company that uses its digital sales platform to enable customers to personalize their entire digital sales performance fully automatically with the help of Big Data Analytics, Machi…

Sam Katiela is the CEO of Mamemo Consulting which is a future-focused group of companies that provide public and private sector clients with ideas, communication strategies, services and products. In addition to that he is the Managing & Creative Director from mamemo, an interactive media and marketing company delivering a full creative service. In…

Robin Eric Haak is a multi-founder and investor in Germany and the US. He is the co-founder of Wo|men Inc., a global network that connects leaders, executives, professionals, entrepreneurial women across Europe and the Axel Springer Plug&Play Accelerator. He just joined Gaia Capital Partners as a Partner. In our conversation we talk about his story…

Jessica Holzbach is a female entrepreneur from Berlin, Germany mentioned by Forbes 30 under 30 and Capital 40 under 40. She is the Co-Founder and CCO at Penta, a digital platform for business banking especially for start-ups, small and medium-sized enterprises. In our conversation we talk about her story, how they started Penta over 4 years ago and…

Patrick Studener is the former Head of Expansion of Uber working there early on in 2013 as one of the first 100 employees. From that he moved on to Wolt, a technology company focused on food delivery, as a COO and now he is the Vice President and Head of EMEA for Bird, an e-scooter start-up. In our conversation we talk about his career, the process…

Tariq Chauhan is the Group CEO and Co-founder of EFS, a facility management company with now 400M $ in revenue and 18,000 employees. He is also ranked amongst the top 5 Indian CEOs by Forbes in 2019. In our conversation we talk about his accomplishments like the outstanding employee satisfaction in his company, how to build trust and most important…

Adeo Ressi is CEO of the Founder Institute, a startup launch program that operates in over 200 cities worldwide. He is a recognized mentor for fast growing technology businesses. He has been a big figure in the Silicon Valley since creating TheFunded in 2007. In our conversation we talk about his personal story, the motivation behind his company an…

Sebastian Johnston is the founder and CEO of VIVERE. VIVERE is a data-driven, environmentally friendly and customer-centric company building innovative and sustainable brands from the ground up. In our conversation we talk about how VIVERE's business model works, how they compete against companies like Amazon and they have been able to start 70+ br…

My guest today is Prerna Gupta who is the founder and CEO of HOOKED which redefines fiction for the generation Z and has a reach of over 100 million viewers. The Hooked app has hit the number one App in the App Store in 25 countries.In this episode Prerna and I talk about how she started building mobile apps together with her husband and then worki…

My guest today is Beri Meric, CEO and Co-Founder of IVY which is providing mentorship workshops and exchanges with world-class leaders to unlock potential and ignite your mind. In this episode Beri and I talk about the importance of communities and how he built a business based on this realization. Furthermore, he recommends his favorite books that…

My guest today is Ed Sappin. He is the founder and CEO of SGS (Sappin Global Strategies) which partners with the next generation of global innovators as well as that he is a partner at Nimali, a renewable energy investment group. In general he invests in and builds innovative companies that focus on technology, energy and healthcare. During this ep…

My guest today is Christian Angermayer. He is the founder of Apeiron Investment Group, his family office and merchant banking business. Apeiron focuses on investments in biotech, fintech & crypto and deep tech companies. With his biotech company ATAI Life Sciences, Christian has the ambitious goal to find cures for various mental health issues like…

My guest today is Vitaly Sedler, CEO and Co-Founder of Intellias a software engineering company which is one of the 15 biggest IT companies in Ukraine. In this episode Vitaly and I are talking about his story and how he got interested in information technology in a country with a weak economy at that time. After leading Intellias for over 18 years …