Hello and Namaste !

My name is Suva Shakya and I'm from Kathmandu, Nepal. I finished my Master's program in Water Resources Engineering from Oregon State University and I'm currently employed with IRZ Consulting LLC in Hermiston, Oregon as a Project Engineer. Work involves using softwares like ArcView (thank God I took that class), AutoCAD (piece of cake) and water modeling and lots of field work. The classes I took at OSU really helped me be professional in the water world where everybody needs water. The local farmers in Hermiston depend on the engineering firms like IRZ to advice on water applications and designing of irrigation systems. The farming world is stepping into a new era where the global food production is under question and more and more are contributing towards alternate fuel production.

In January of 2008, I visited Nepal and met with several professionals in the water world including the country director of IWMI-Nepal, ex-director of ICIMOD and OSU alumni Dr. Binayak Bhadra, Dr. Ajay Dixit, Project Coordinator of Nepal Water Conservation Foundation, NWCF. They all say the same - get a PhD if you want to work in Nepal. I also visited the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology, DHM, Government of Nepal and the Central department of Hydrology and Meteorology, Tribhuvan University, Nepal Academy of Science and Technology, NAST. It was nice to see my old friends take job positions in these prestigious institutions.

I also had an opportunity to give a guest lecture at the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology at Tri-Chandra Campus, Kathmandu. Lots of students showed and seemed interested in going abroad for further education in Water and Meteorological sciences.

My interests range from preserving the rich culture of Nepal to knowing how much water has been evapo-transpired today. My first Masters degree from Nepal on Hydrology and Meteorology and my thesis was on the analysis of the rainfall and runoff from the Dudh Koshi Basin. Data is not easily available in Nepal and research questions were limited accordingly. Data is controlled by DHM for marketing purpose. My second masters' from OSU was more into hydrological engineering and computer modeling was involved. I looked into the performance of fully distributed water balance model from The Danish hydrologic Institute (DHI), MIKE SHE, and looked into Evapotransporation component in an arid region in Klamath Basin. I've gained experience in handling hydrologic equipments ranging from snow sampling to using netron probe for soil moisture measurements.

My second Masters' thesis: Use of MIKE SHE in the estimation of Evapotranspiration in the Sprague River Basin

In my thesis, tests are done for vegetation for wetland, sagebrush, juniper, ponderosa pine, maize and pasture using MIKE SHE. Resutls are then compared with the estimated ET proivded by the AgriMet data network. Tests are also done for irrigation methods in MIKE SHE for maize and pasture. The thesis was defended December 5, 2007.

I am thankful to National Resources Conservation Services (NRCS) and Prof. Richard Cuenca, my advisor, for giving me graduate assistantship to finish my Masters Program.

My interests: Water Balance, Modeling of surface water, snow hydrology, water resources, groundwater, database using MS Access, ArcGIS, ArcHydro, AutoCAD, Visual Basic, C programming, Matlab, Web designing with PHP and photography and hydrologic models.

Models I'm familiar with: MIKE-SHE, DAISY, IWFM, TOPMODEL,TOPSIMPL, HEC-HMS, PRMS, IHACRES, HYDRUS 2D, WaterCAD .

Participation:

Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI): International Users Conference, San Diego, 2007: Student Volunteer
American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE): International Conference, Portland, OR, 2006: Participant
Hydrophiles: Officer, Webmaster (06-07)
Nepali Association of Oregon (NAO) : Member
Newa Organization of America (NOA): Member
Miao Fa Chan Temple, Portland: served as Webmaster
Hydrologic Science Team (HST): served as Webmaster
Hillslope and Watershed Hydrology Lab: served as Webmaster

Scholarships and Awards:

2006 - Edward S. Allen Scholarship, $1000
2007 - Chambers Family Foundation Scholarship, $2150
2007- Water Resources Alumni Award for leadership and service to the hydro-community, 2006-2007, Water Resources Graduate Program, OSU.

-: Click here for list of classes I've taken :-

Career Timeline:

2008-current: RProject Engineer, IRZ Consulting, LLC, Hermiston, Oregon
Designing, engineering, monitoring irrigation water in one of the highly sophisticated agricultural region of the United States.

2005-2007: Research Assistant, Oregon State University. Evapotranspiration and Meteorological measurements using historical data and simulation modeling using MIKE-SHE into the Sprague River Sub-basin of Klamath Basin, Southern Oregon.

2003-2005: Centralized Billing, Freightliner, Portland, OR. Department outsourced to National Business Systems. E-return Administrator; Exhaustive use of MSAccess and spreadsheets to keep account of Dealer progress of understanding on the invoicing system. Customer support to few hundred dealers. Invoice Discrepancies. Supervisory support, training new employees and computer network support.

2001-2003: Centralized Billing, Freightliner, Contractor from Spherion. Billing Representative. Invoicing, error analysis, reversals, training, Dealer Support. Portland, Oregon, USA.

2000-Late: 2 months: Powells Books, book keeping, Portland, Oregon, USA

1998-2000: M. Sc. in Hydrology and Meteorology, Tribhuvan University, Kirtipur, NEPAL

Thesis:
"Rainfall-Runoff Analysis of Dudh Koshi River Basin", Defended in September 2000. Advisor: Prof. Kharga Bahadur Thapa, current Head of Central Department of Hydrology and Meteorology, Tribhuvan University, Kirtipur, NEPAL

1998: Environment Volunteer: Student's Partnership Worldwide (UK): Field trip for 6 months to Juving, Solu, NEPAL on environmental education at the grassroots level.

1997: B.S. (2 years) in Science with Meteorology and Hydrology, Statistics and Mathematics, Tri-Chandra Multiple Campus, Kathmandu, NEPAL

School and childhood:

I grew up in a beautiful town of Kalimpong inside Darjeeling District, where the world's finest tea comes from. I went to St. Augustine's School, one of the finest catholic schools in India and then transferred to Dr. Graham's Homes, one of the few Anglo-Indian schools for +2 and studied Pure Science Computer Programming.