Minnesota magazine profiled Viet Ngo in 2003.

A polymath, an eccentric, an artist-engineer, an entrepreneur, an environmentalist, a businessman—the remarkable mind of Viet Ngo (B.S. '72, M.S. '77) was apparent even before he became all those things. Before Ngo earned a four-year degree in two years, before he became an acclaimed environmental artist, before he discovered an environmentally friendly way to treat wastewater, a University of Minnesota professor recognized his potential. Their chance acquaintance changed Ngo's life.

The year was 1969, and Ngo, the eldest son of a South Vietnamese colonel and provincial governor, was thinking about going abroad for college to escape the war raging in his country. Because Ngo had been educated in French schools and was fluent in the language, the plan was to send him to study in France.

Hal Chase (B.S. '43), a University of Minnesota political science professor and decorated Marine Corps Reserve general was then on active duty in Vietnam. He became friends with Ngo's father and took a special interest in his oldest son's education. "Chase asked my father, 'What's happening with Viet? Is he going to college?" Ngo recalls. "My father says, "He's planning to go to France.' When Chase heard that he asked, 'Why would you go to a backward country like France when you can come to the great state of Minnesota?" Ngo pauses, laughing at the memory: "Chase was a very kind person, but he had a wicked sense of humor."

Chase advised Ngo to consider the University of Minnesota. "He asked me if I knew about the Mississippi, the greatest river in the United States. I said that I did, and he said, 'Well, the Mississippi River is born in the state of Minnesota. It is only fitting that you should begin there too.'" To sweeten the deal, Chase offered Ngo free lodging with his wife and family.

In 1970, Ngo packed his bags, and once he arrived in Minnesota he never left. He lived with the Chase family just six months, but the two men remained friends until Chase died suddenly in 1981. "I miss Chase and I truly appreciate all that he did for me," Ngo says. "He and the University of Minnesota had a profound impact on my life."

Today, Ngo is president and CEO of Lemna International, a multimillion-dollar Minneapolis-based company that engineers and designs public works projects in countries around the globe. He's also an internationally respected environmental artist whose large-scale works of landform art are heralded for their stature and significance, sometimes overlapping with his engineering projects. But when he came to Minnesota more than 30 years ago, Ngo was just a teenager, a young man with an artist's heart and a businessman's sense of purpose.

Because he had seven younger siblings at home, Ngo knew that he must succeed in college—and later, in business—to help his family survive. But he also had dreams of becoming a famous artist, and he hoped to use his college education as a way to do that. The first step was learning to speak English. "I taught myself the language by watching TV," Ngo says. "At the beginning, I'd watch for six, eight hours a day."

Then Ngo set out to get an undergraduate degree in civil engineering. In order to save money for his cash-strapped family, he juggled classes, studied late into the night, and took up to 40 credits a quarter, graduating in just two years. "The only way I could do it was if my professors would work with me," Ngo says. "I would tell them about my family situation, and most of them were pretty understanding."

While Ngo had been busy speeding through college, the world around him was in a state of upheaval. "I left a country at war to go to a country at war," Ngo says. "American universities were definitely antiwar at that time, and the University of Minnesota was no different." Students were staging protests, walking out of classes, and taking over buildings. Instead of being troubled by the chaos, Ngo was inspired by it. He felt that the struggles being played out before him were a powerful illustration of the American spirit at its best—of the power of the individual and of the freedom to speak out against government policies. Because he was beginning to consider himself an American, Ngo took those examples to heart.

"The freedom that exists here was so exciting to me," Ngo says. "I felt like the opportunities were endless, as were the risks. One of the lessons I learned right away as a student at the U of M was that freedom and individuality are distinct parts of a two-pronged idea. On one hand, you are free to choose your own destiny, but if you fail, it is your own damn fault."

Succeed or fail, Ngo realized that he needed to find time to pursue art. His entire family had begun the slow process of immigrating to America, and one after another, his six brothers came to Minnesota to begin their studies at the University. His sister and parents came later.

His undergraduate studies completed, Ngo began coursework for a master's degree in civil engineering. This time he paid his own way and moved at a more leisurely pace, taking art classes and eventually renting studio space. He excelled in a number of mediums, but eventually settled on large-scale sculpture, works that filled entire rooms and weighed thousands of pounds. "I was encouraged to go into photography or printmaking," Ngo says, "but I felt like my calling was to make a statement about the physical world." Many of his sculptures were interactive works, where visitors could actually walk inside the art.

This was the mid 1970s, and a new movement called environmental art was just beginning to take off. Environmental artists combined their aesthetic and political sensibilities to create works that commented on the state of the physical world, and in some cases, artfully presented solutions for existing environmental problems, a subset that scholars dubbed reclamation art. Over the years, Ngo's art has been exhibited in galleries in New York, Minneapolis, and Washington, D.C.

After completing his master's degree, Ngo worked at a couple of local engineering firms and maintained his art studio. He continued to create larger and larger works of art. His enormous sculptures, some as big as 36 feet long and 18 feet tall, were so expensive to create that "nobody could buy them," Ngo explains. "They literally cost hundreds of thousands of dollars."

Just as Ngo's art literally threatened to overwhelm its creator, he and a business partner (whom he has since bought out), discovered a water-treatment process that brought together Ngo's passions for art and engineering. The discovery was deceptively simple but potentially invaluable: duckweed, a common plant that goes by the Latin name lemnacae, could turn wastewater into safe, clean groundwater. In 1983, the partners went into business, naming the firm Lemna, after the duckweed. Ngo's civil engineering degree was put to use developing duckweed-based water- treatment facilities, and his talent at creating large-scale art went into the facilities' design.

In 1987, Ngo cemented his reputation as an artist and as an engineer when he created a water treatment facility at Devil's Lake, North Dakota. The facility, which continues to attract tourists, environmentalists, and art scholars, features two miles of serpentine channels spread over more than 50 acres of wetlands. The work, best seen from the air, is a spectacular calling card for Ngo and Lemna. The resulting publicity helped earn him a reputation as a visionary who looks at difficult environmental problems from an artist's perspective.

C. Ford Runge, distinguished McKnight professor of applied economics and law at the University of Minnesota, once served on the Lemna board of directors. He says that Ngo's diverse talents are the secret behind the low-profile company's success. Lemna currently has $2.5 billion worth of projects under development around the world. When it comes to business, as with sculpture, Ngo thinks big.

"He's quite a polymath," Runge says. "The best way to appreciate Viet is not from the point of view of a businessman, but more as an artist in business. It's not just money he's after. He's interested in creating something lasting for the world."

ASK Viet Ngo about his brothers and he laughs and takes out his pen. "My father gave all of us the same name with only a slight difference in the middle name," Ngo says, writing a list of names on a piece of paper: “Ngo Nhu Hung Viet, Ngo Nhu Dung Viet, et cetera. "We all studied at the U, and we all lived together for a while. When one of us would get a call and they'd ask for Viet Ngo, we'd have to ask, 'Which one? What's his major? It was my dad's idea of a joke."

While Ngo laughs about it now, he will admit that growing up with a name that was little more than an elaborate punch line only intensified his desire to stand out from the crowd. To him, America represents the opportunity to become his own person, to create a destiny above and beyond any expectations established by his family of origin. "I respect the idea of individualism and freedom in this country," Ngo says. "In Asian culture, individuality is a foreign concept. Here, in America, my children are very much free to do what they want to do. We try to let them find their own voices." For Ngo's three children, individuality began at birth. "They all have names that my wife and I made up," he explains. "We wanted to make sure that nobody else in the world had the same name."

Such quirks set Ngo apart from the crowd. His office, located in an elegant, restored mansion on Park Avenue in Minneapolis's Central neighborhood, is a mix of traditional furnishings, ornate rugs, and eclectic art gathered from Ngo's travels around the world. On an office tour, he makes a point of stopping halfway up the front staircase and pointing at two simple wooden busts hanging on the wall high above his head. The busts are from Africa, and he looks up at them almost serenely. "I just smile every time I walk up here," he says. "They are so beautiful."

Friends say that Ngo has hidden talents; he's constantly surprising them with skills no one knew he possessed. Dennis Kim, a former University of Minnesota classmate and president of the Eden Prairie-based engineering consulting firm Enviroscience, Inc., has done business with Lemna International. He recalls an evening spent with Ngo during a Korean business trip.

"A good friend of mine invited us to a jazz club," Kim says. "His cousin was a professional jazz singer—one of the best in Korea. She said she'd sing for us, and Viet volunteered to play the piano. She said, 'No way. You don't know enough to accompany me.' He said, 'I can do it.' None of us even realized that he could play piano at all, and we said, 'Come on, Viet. She needs a real piano player.' But he just sat down at the piano and began to play. In the beginning he was a little tentative, but by the second song he was really enjoying himself, and doing a wonderful job. The singer couldn't believe it. Viet really is a genius."

"I am an eccentric guy," Ngo explains modestly. "I don't do things like other people. I never have."