Civil and Environmental Engineering

Field Description

Students in the M.S. or Ph.D. program may select one area of concentration. Each student in the Ph.D. program must take a qualifying examination by the end of their 3rd semester. Additional information on the M.S. and Ph.D. programs is available on request from the graduate field office.

The professional degree of Master of Engineering (Civil & Environmental) is intended primarily for persons who plan to practice engineering directly. Admission preference is given to applicants with an accredited United States civil engineering degree or a substantial equivalent. The professional degree requires a minimum of thirty credits of graduate-level work in the principles and practices of the field. Specific requirements include a broad-based technical background in the field, courses in design, and professional practice. Additional information may be obtained from the Assistant Director of Graduate Program at cee_grad@cornell.edu

The M.Eng. program in Engineering Management is geared towards engineers who want to stay in a technological environment, but advance to managerial roles. Through an in-depth, real-world group design project, and course content in management science, project management, decision and risk analysis, information technology, finance and accounting, and organizational behavior students gain the technical and managerial skills necessary to become effective engineering managers. They also learn managerial skills to help organize and supervise people from different cultures and backgrounds so as to maximize teamwork, creativity, and productivity, and to do so in an environment of global awareness and concern for ethical issues. Students learn to identify problems, formulate and analyze models to understand them, and interpret analysis results for managerial action. Further, they learn to navigate this process with a broad, global perspective that considers the full range of technical, economic, environmental, social and other consequences over an appropriate time horizon. While critically important to the success of engineering managers, many of these skills, the managerial and systems analysis abilities in particular, are not emphasized in traditional engineering curricula. Additional information may be obtained from the Program Coordinator at engmanagement_grad@cornell.edu

Civil Infrastructure Systems aims to augment the traditional education in infrastructure engineering with additional perspectives and systems methods to address new challenges. These new challenges are: understanding how structures behave as a system of components and how individual structures behave together as an infrastructure system and understanding the technical aspects of infrastructure engineering within the social, economic, political and cultural context in which they exist. Further, consideration must be given to long-term maintenance, operation and destruction and uncertainties that affect infrastructure system design and analysis.

Complex Systems Engineering investigates how systems-level behavior emerges from interactions among components in both engineered and natural systems. This inherently interdisciplinary field combines mathematical modeling, nonlinear dynamics, data science, numerical simulation, optimization, and stochastic processes with domain-specific knowledge grounded in physical, chemical, and biological principles. Research in this area spans a wide range of applications, including cyber-physical systems, environmental fluids, microbial communities, renewable energy, synthetic biology, transportation systems, infrastructure, and power networks. The curriculum provides a strong foundation in mathematical modeling, with flexibility for students to tailor coursework to their specific research interests.

Environmental Processes is concerned with the protection and management of the quality of the environment for the benefit of society. Degree programs emphasize biological, chemical, and physical phenomena and engineering principles; laboratory and computational skills; and their application to the analysis of relevant problems.

Environmental Fluid Mechanics and Hydrology involves the study of fluid mechanics of the environment and the associated application to hydraulics, hydrology, coastal oceanography, and meteorology as related to the wet earth and atmosphere.

Environmental and Water Resources Systems Engineering. Research and instruction in this area address the development and application of scientific principles, economic theory, and mathematical techniques to the management and planning of public infrastructure and environmental and water resource systems. Research projects include evaluation of engineering projects, groundwater contaminant modeling and remediation optimization, statistical analysis of hydrologic processes, hydropower systems optimization, water supply systems management, water quality planning, risk analysis, river basin and groundwater systems planning and operation, ecological systems management, sustainable development and computer graphics-oriented decision support systems.

Structural Engineering includes, in addition to the conventional aspects of structural analysis and design, interests in computational mechanics, artificial intelligence, dynamics and earthquake engineering, behavior of thin steel structures, control of large-space structures, reliability, stochastic mechanics, natural disaster risk assessment and management, civil infrastructure systems, evaluation of structures and non-destructive testing, fracture mechanics, blast and impact loads, progressive collapse, and structural materials. (Note: the M.S. degree is not admitting applicants into the Structural Engineering concentration at this time.)

Transportation Systems Engineering embraces policy, planning, design, and evaluation of transport systems and the relationships among transport supply and demand, land use, and regional development. The approach is multimodal and systems oriented; it emphasizes the use of quantitative and analytical techniques of operations research and economics.

Detailed academic requirements can be located in the Graduate Study Handbook (for M.S., M.S./Ph.D., and Ph.D. students).

Contact Information

Website: http://www.cee.cornell.edu
Email: cee_grad@cornell.edu
Phone: 607 255-7560

219 Hollister Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853-3501

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Field Manual

Manual

Subject and Degrees