Civil and Environmental Engineering
MIT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering is dedicated to balancing the built environment with the natural world. In our research we seek to understand natural systems, to foster the intelligent use of resources, and to design sustainable infrastructure systems.
We strive to be the leading civil and environmental engineering department in the world and to lay the future path for this combined discipline. We believe that human infrastructure and the natural environment must be viewed synergistically and that this department can provide leadership in the field by focusing on technological innovations, advances in basic knowledge, and a systems perspective.
We concentrate our research efforts on quantitative and analytical approaches; novel, experimentally based modeling; and the development and use of tools such as sensors, information technology, and advanced computing applied to problems in the natural and built environments. We work in partnership with corporations, governments, and other departments at MIT to insure that our work has the breadth and expertise necessary to tackle problems with economic, social, political, scientific and engineering dimensions.
The Parsons Laboratory for Environmental Science and Engineering in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering has a long history of highly respected water and environmental research. Parsons research areas include environmental fluid mechanics, hydrology, hydroclimatology, environmental health, aquatic chemistry, environmental biology, microbiology and genomics.
Current research in the department explores ways to make concrete more environmentally friendly by changing the nanostructure of its cement component, designing mechanisms to sequester carbon dioxide from power plant emissions, and examining new ways to address sustainability issues in transportation.
CEE’s research activities focus on eight major areas:
- Environmental chemistry
- Environmental microbiology
- Environmental fluid mechanics and coastal engineering
- Geotechnical engineering and geomechanics
- Hydrology and hydroclimatology
- Materials and structures
- Operations research/supply chain
- Transportation
