Otak, Inc., an award-winning urban design, planning and engineering firm, announced it has hired Janel Hammond as a marketing coordinator, and Nick Allmendinger as a senior geomorphologist in the Water and Natural Resources group. Both will work out of the firm’s Kirkland office.

Hammond has more than seven years of experience marketing for a variety of private businesses. Her experience includes managing corporate Web sites and e-mail marketing campaigns, proposal and qualifications preparation, event planning, and presentation development. Allmendinger is a scientist with more than 10 years of experience working on streams in developing watersheds. He has published research papers about the influence of urbanization and riparian vegetation on river processes in peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of the American Watershed Association and Water Resources Research.

He recently served as an assistant professor in the Department of Watershed Sciences at Utah State University in Vernal, Utah.