School of Engineering
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Field of Study: Civil and Environmental Systems Engineering

The curvature of the earth connected with nodes and lines.

The Civil and Environmental Systems Engineering (CESE) program prepares innovative problem solvers to address the interconnected challenges of infrastructure, environment, and public health. By integrating data science, systems thinking, and engineering diplomacy, students gain expertise in designing resilient cities, mitigating disasters, optimizing infrastructure, and advancing sustainability. Through advanced statistical techniques, AI-driven modeling, GIS, mixed-methods approaches and uncertainty quantification, graduates will be prepared to lead equitable, technology-driven solutions in designing resilient infrastructure, managing natural hazards, optimizing infrastructure performance, and facilitating environmental justice.

The CESE program is problem-focused and solutions-oriented with the following attributes:

  • Emphasizes use of quantitative and qualitative data in understanding and decision-making for civil, environmental, and public health systems through systems thinking.
  • Teaches students how to organize, analyze, and model data using a variety of tools (e.g., statistical, computational, AI, GIS, mixed-methods).
  • Provides students with domain-specific expertise in infrastructure resiliency, catastrophic modeling, environmental health and technologies, engineering diplomacy, community-engaged and equitable engineering, and other domains of intersecting interests.
  • Demonstrates how to synthesize theory and practice to solve real-world issues through a year-long problem-focused immersion course.

Requirements:

A full-time student can complete this option (MS-non-thesis) in one year. 30 credits are required.

1. Core (6 courses - 15 SHU)

Required (6 SHU):

  • CEE209 Problem Focused Immersion for Making Data Driven Decisions (Fall – Spring)
  • CEE292 Graduate Seminar (Fall – Spring)
  • CEE293 Probability and Statistics in CEE (Fall)

Choose 3 courses (9 SHU):

  • CEE132 Data Science for Sustainability (Fall or Spring)
  • CEE184 Resilient and Equitable Infrastructure (Spring)
  • CEE187 Geographic Information Systems (Fall)
  • CEE193 Equitable Engineering (Spring)
  • CEE214 Water Resource Systems (Spring)
  • CEE293 Systems Approaches for Civil Infrastructure (Fall)

2. Domain-specific courses (15 SHU)

Students gain domain-specific knowledge by taking courses in areas such as Climate & Energy, Extreme Events, Health & the Environment, and Resilient Systems, or in another area aligned with their individual interests. These courses illustrate how systems engineering principles are applied to address key challenges in each domain. To highlight the breadth of available options, examples of domain-relevant courses are provided below, organized according to the department’s research themes. These examples are intended to be illustrative only—students are not limited to the listed courses or the specific groupings shown. Additional core courses listed above can also count as domain-specific courses. To ensure alignment with their academic and professional goals, students should consult with their advisor when selecting courses for their chosen domain.

Climate and Energy

  • CEE104 Sustainable Transportation
  • CS138 Reinforcement Learning
  • ECS262 Climate Modeling
  • EE170 Power Systems
  • UEP267 Sustainability Metrics and Decision Tools

Extreme Events

  • CEE293 Model Verification and Validation
  • ENV121 Drones for Data Collection, Mapping & Analysis
  • MATH190 Uncertainty Quantification
  • UEP235 Advanced Geographic Information Systems
  • UEP236 Spatial Statistics

Health and Environment

  • CEE152 Environmental Health Data-Lab
  • CEE251 Biology of Water and Health
  • EIB-E246 Environmental Economics
  • EM207 Solving Complex Problems through Systems Thinking
  • UEP238 Data Science for Urban Sustainability

Resilient Systems

  • CEE189 Introduction to Remote Sensing
  • CEE227 Structural Reliability
  • CS142 Network Science
  • ES100 Actionable Engineering Diplomacy
  • UEP239 Geospatial Programming with Python

Note that full-time students may choose to complete a thesis as part of their degree program, in which case the program may take 1.5 to 2 years to complete, and thesis research (6 credits) may replace the equivalent number of domain-specific course credits.

Faculty

Laurie Baise: Geotechnical earthquake engineering, seismic hazard mapping, natural hazards and catastrophe modeling, GIS and spatial modeling.

Shafik Islam: Engineering diplomacy, principled pragmatism, data driven decision making, climate and health, remote sensing, flood forecasting.

Jonathan Lamontagne: Water resources, decision making under uncertainty, hydrologic statistics, integrated global change assessment.

Babak Moaveni: Probabilistic system identification of structures, signal processing, Bayesian inference, model updating, structural dynamics, earthquake engineering, uncertainty quantification, verification and validation of computational models.

Greses Perez: Engineering education, misinformation in engineering, learning about and with emerging technologies, language and culture in engineering.

Lauryn Spearing: Infrastructure management, sociotechnical systems engineering, systems thinking for resilience and sustainability, infrastructure interdependencies.

Helen Suh: Environmental health, environmental epidemiology, air pollution, exposure science, data analytics.

Deborah Sunter: Data science focused on energy, development and environmental management; computational modeling of electrical grid integration of renewable energy and storage; interaction of science and policy in academia, industry and government.

Farshid Vahedifard: Resilient and equitable infrastructure, impacts of extreme events (e.g., drought, flood, wildfire) in a changing climate on infrastructure and communities, infrastructure adaptation, analytical and numerical methods in geotechnical engineering, dams and levees, unsaturated soils.