CV

My name is Rasmus, and I work as an Assistant Professor in the Department of the Built Environment at Aalborg University.

Personal information

Name:	Rasmus Vest Nielsen
Age:	31 years
Job:	Assistant professor in Environmental and Hydraulic Engineering at the Department of the Built Environment
Email:	rn@civil.aau.dk

Research Interests

Groundwater flow and solute transport modelling
Modelling and experimental work on unsaturated soil physics in capillary fringes
Urban flood forecasting
Urban Water Management, Storm- and Wastewater Runoff, and Sewer Processes
Real-time control of urban sewer systems
Sensor technology in soil, urban drainage, and hydrological systems
Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modelling
Particle Shape and Size Analysis of Microplastics

Professional Experience

Assistant Professor, Department of the Built Environment, Aalborg University,
Post-doc, Department of the Built Environment, Aalborg University, Oct. 2019 to May 2022
PhD student, Department of Civil Engineering, Aalborg University, Aug. 2016 to Oct. 2019.

Teaching Responsibilities

(2019 - Now) - Hydrogeology and Groundwater Modelling. Master programme in Water and Environmental Engineering and Geography. 5 ECTS course. Course Responsible.
(2021 - Now) - Hydraulics and Mass Transport. Bachelor programme in Chemistry and Biotechnology. Responsible for 1.7 out of 5 ECTS.
(2019 - 2021) - Integrated Process Modelling. Bachelor programme in Chemistry, Environmental Technology, and Biotechnology. Responsible for 2.5 out of 5 ECTS.
(2019 - 2021) - Modelling of Heterogeneous Processes. Bachelor programme in Chemistry, Environmental Technology, and Biotechnology. Responsible for 1.7 out of 5 ECTS.
(2016 - Now) - Hydroinformatics. Master programme in Water and Environmental Engineering. Responsible for 1 out of 5 ECTS.

Supervision

Semester projects

Project supervisor, 1st semester bachelor projects (1 project), 2019.
Project supervisor, 2nd semester bachelor projects (1 project), 2019.
Project supervisor, 3rd semester bachelor projects (6 projects), 2016 and 2017.
Project supervisor, 7th Semester master projects (10 projects), 2019-now.

Master thesis

Main supervisor for 12 master theses from 2016 to 2023 in the master programme in Water and Environmental Engineering.

See Educational Portfolio for a exchaustive list of supervised projects.

Modelling and Programming Skills

Modelling software:	MIKE URBAN, MIKE FLOOD, MIKE 21, MIKE 3, MIKE SHE, SWMM, COMSOL, GMS, MODFLOW, and EPANET
Proficient programming languages:	C and Python
Familiar programming languages:	C++, C#, Zig, and MATLAB
Web development:	Javascript, HTML, and OpenLayers
GIS:	ArcGIS, QGIS, GRASS, GDAL

Key research and development projects

TERNÆRT VAND - Interaktion mellem afløbssystem og terrænnært vand fra oven, neden og siden (Interaction between Drainage system and near terrain water from above and below). Funded by VUDP. Total budget DKK 0.775M, AAU grant: DKK 0.367M. Partners: AAU, Aarhus Vand A/S, NIRAS A/S, and Aarhus Kommune. Rasmus Nielsen performs real-time monitoring of environmental data, experimental lab work, and numerical modelling.
GRAVA - Samspil mellem GRoundvand, Afløbssystem og VAndløb i byer (Interaction between GRundwater, Drainage system and streams in urban areas). Funded by VUDP. Total budget DKK 2.2M, AAU grant: DKK 1M. Partners: AAU, Niras, Aalborg Forsyning and Aalborg Kommune. Rasmus Nielsen performs numerical experiments of the urban water cycle.
DONUT - Distributed Online Monitoring of the Urban Water Cycle (2018-2021). Founded by Innovationsfonden. Developing solutions for cost-efficient distributed monitoring in the hydrological and hydraulic states of the urban water cycle. Rasmus Nielsen performed CFD simulations of urban drainage structures.
MarinePlastic. Funded by Velux Fonden, Consortium: Aalborg University (Denmark), Aarhus University (Denmark), Technical University of Denmark, National Museum of Denmark, and Roskilde University. Rasmus Nielsen developed image processing software to quantify microplastic particle size and shape and recognize fibers from micro-FTIR-imaging.
Multiscale Urban Flood forecasting (2016-2019). PhD project. Funded by ERA-NET Cofund Water Works 2014. Total budget € 1.2M; AAU grant: € 289k. Consortium: Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, Aalborg University (Denmark), Delft University of Technology TUD (The Netherlands), and Aalto University AALTO (Finland).

Software and Hardware Development

microMorph is a GUI application written in C/C++ to calculate the shape morphology and size of objects from the particle map provided by sIMPle (https://simple-plastics.eu/). It provides a graphical interface to inspect particles and their respective shape characteristics. Link to application. Programmer and developer: Rasmus Nielsen and Fan Liu.

shapeLib (Nielsen, 2020). DLL library written in C/C++ for the Systematic Identification of MicroPLastics in the Environment (siMPle) program, https://simple-plastics.eu/. The library calculates the sizes and shapes of particles and detects fiberlike structures. Source code. Programmer: Rasmus Nielsen.

Sensor development: System design, implementation, and tests: Experienced with programming of PLC’s in C/C++ code. Built hardware, designed, and coded multiple low-cost remotely sensed PLC devices to collect measurements of, e.g., light, temperature, distance and more from 2016 to the present. See Nielsen and Thorndahl (2017), poster, and source code. Programmer and designer: Rasmus Nielsen.

Data analysis and visualization: Years of experience with data analysis and representation using Python, MATLAB, GIS, and various other applications. Used to present data visually in a dynamic way for presentations and online publications.

See grava.dk for online interactive visualization of groundwater modelling.
See WATS for online visualization of a hydrogen sulfide concentrations in a sewer model.
See TERNÆRT.dk for online visualization of the transition between capillary fringe saturated water conditions in soil.
See rainfall for online interactive visualization of daily rainfall.

Personal and professional webpages

Education

Ph.D. in Civil Engineering (Urban Water Research Group), Aalborg University, Denmark, December 2019, with thesis Multi-scale Urban Flood Forecasting
M.Sc. in Civil Engineering (Water and Environment), Aalborg University, Denmark, Juni 2016, with thesis Real-time Control of Ikast Sewer System.
B.Sc. in Civil Engineering (Water and Environment), Aalborg University, Denmark, Juni 2014, with thesis Performance analysis of Svenstrup drainage system and receiving recipients
Aalborg Technical Gymnasium (high school, specializing in physics and math), Juni 2011.

Bibliography

Nielsen, R. (2020). Library for analyzing particle sizes and shapes. Source code.

Nielsen, R. and Thorndahl, S. (2017). Low-cost remotely sensed environmental monitoring stations. In Conference Proceedings, pages 1738–1741. IWA/IAHR International Conference on Urban Drainage. 14th International Conference on Urban Drainage, ICUD ; Conference date: 10-09-2017 Through 15-09-2017. Source code.