Overview
The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) at UC Berkeley is a worldwide leader in developing engineering solutions to societal-scale challenges. The Department conducts cutting-edge research, in evolving and vital areas that address societal needs for well-designed and well-operated buildings, energy, transportation, and water systems. These critical systems must be reliable and resilient in the face of hazards such as earthquakes and flooding. Extensive efforts will be needed to adapt civil infrastructure to withstand adverse changes in weather and climate. Our research and teaching serve the needs of a growing and increasingly urban world population that requires sustainable improvements in standards of living.
CEE research establishes and advances the intellectual foundations of new fields of study. We develop theory and improve understanding, and provide tools and techniques for solving important new problems. Educational activities of the Department focus on developing future leaders in the engineering profession, in academia, and in the broader societal context. Through individual and collective efforts, the Department serves the needs of our College and University, and provides technical expertise and service to other public, private, and professional entities.
The Department is a place of intellectual vitality and diversity in which all students, faculty, and staff have the opportunity and the impetus to achieve their highest potential. Signs of this vitality and diversity are seen in innovative research conducted by students and faculty; creative, flexible, adaptable, and forward-looking curricula; outstanding classroom teaching; attentive academic mentoring; and a shared sense of a community that is inclusive and respectful of all members. We are proud of our contributions to the public mission of the University of California, as demonstrated for example by our role in providing access to higher education for students from low and middle-income families.
Libraries
The Kresge Engineering Library, located in the nearby Stephen D. Bechtel Engineering Center, contains over more than 175,000 volumes, more than 2,000 journals and periodicals, and 680,000 technical reports.
The Water Resources Center Archives, located at UC Riverside, specializes in material related to hydraulics, hydrology, and coastal engineering, with 100,000 titles in water resources and over 15,000 reports and papers on ocean engineering and oceanography.
The Institute of Transportation Studies Harmer E. Davis Library contains one of the largest multimodal, interdisciplinary transportation reference and research collections in the world. The library holds over 125,000 volumes and receives more than 2,500 serials. The library is also a depository for government transportation publications.
The Earthquake Engineering Research Center (EERC) Library is an affiliated library of UC Berkeley, specializing in structural engineering, geotechnical engineering, engineering dynamics, engineering seismology, and earthquake public policy. It is located at the Richmond Field Station, five miles from the main Berkeley campus and is accessible by a Berkeley-RFS shuttle.
Research Laboratories
Located on the second floor of Davis Hall within the UC Berkeley campus, the Structural and Materials Laboratory houses equipment for studying the behavior of structural elements and systems on both scale models and prototypes. The laboratory is based upon the base-isolated strong floor, to which the reaction frames, actuators, and specimens are securely fastened during the tests. Testing facilities range from miniaturized precision equipment to a four-million-pound capacity testing machine.
The Environmental Fluid Mechanics Laboratory, located in O’Brien Hall, is equipped for experimental work in general fluid mechanics, granular flow, water-sediment interactions, hydraulic structures, wave hydrodynamics, and sediment transport that supports field-based studies of environmental hydrodynamics. Hydrology laboratories in Davis Hall provide equipment and instrumentation supporting terrestrial, ecological and in-channel hydrology, and field deployment staging areas. Several large-scale experimental facilities are available at the Richmond Field Station, including a wave flume, a tow tank and a large wave basin. Computational facilities are available through the Berkeley Research Computing program.
Environmental Quality laboratories are located in Davis and O’Brien Halls. The campus laboratories for research and teaching are configured for organic and inorganic chemical analysis in air, water, and soils; process analysis for aerosol dynamics, biological transformations, photochemical reactions, and mass transfer rates in porous media; and computational facilities to support environmental transport modeling. Additional facilities, including mesocosms and experimental wetlands, are utilized at the Richmond Field Station and at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
The Geotechnical Engineering Laboratories (on campus) and the Soil Mechanics and Bituminous Materials Laboratory (situated at the Richmond Field Station) provide extensive facilities for research on soil and rock properties, soil and rock mechanics, foundation engineering, and the behavior and properties of asphalts and asphaltic mixtures. State-of-the-art computer facilities are available for test control, data acquisition, data processing, and numerical analysis. Graduate students working toward master's or doctoral degrees in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering conduct individual research in these laboratories, usually as part of a continuing program of research conducted by faculty members.
Research Groups
The Center for Smart Infrastructure was formed in 2021 as a collaboration between UC Berkeley and the East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD). The center, based at Richmond Field Station, applies cutting-edge technology to tackle infrastructure challenges caused by climate change, aging systems and natural hazards.
The Consortium on Green Design and Manufacturing (CGDM) was formed to encourage multidisciplinary research and education on environmental management, design for environment, and pollution prevention issues in critical industries.
The Institute for Environmental Science and Engineering (IESE) is an interdisciplinary Organized Research Unit of UC Berkeley that has a mandate to support research that helps protect public health and the environment. The institute plays a major role in supporting the efforts of the Berkeley Water Center, an organization that coordinates campus-wide research on topics such as urban water infrastructure, water and sanitation in developing countries, and water-related climate change adaptation.
The Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS) is a multidisciplinary program that has supported transportation research at the University of California since 1948. The ITS administers several Organized Research Units, including Partners for Advanced Transit and Highways (PATH) and the Pavement Research Center. The ITS is a member of the National Center of Excellence for Aviation Operations Research consortium and is the home of the University of California Transportation Center.
The Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER) is a multi-institutional research and education center with headquarters at UC Berkeley. Investigators from over 20 universities, several consulting companies, and researchers at various state and federal government agencies contribute to research programs focused on performance-based earthquake engineering. These programs aim to identify and reduce the risks from major earthquakes to life safety and to the economy by including research in a wide variety of disciplines, including structural and geotechnical engineering, geology/seismology, lifelines, transportation, architecture, economics, risk management, and public policy. The center also provides software through the Open System for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (OPENSEES) project, operates the NISEE Library, and houses a Strong Motions Database of earthquake records.
The Project Production Systems Laboratory (P2SL) at UC Berkeley is a research institute dedicated to developing and deploying knowledge and tools for project management. P2SL staff and students partner with companies worldwide, and especially those involved in the Northern California construction industry, to advance the theory and implementation of the lean construction philosophy, principles, and methods in the industry, its companies, and its projects.
Undergraduate Programs
Civil Engineering: BS
Environmental Engineering: Minor
Geotechnical Engineering: Minor
Structural Engineering: Minor
Graduate Programs
Civil and Environmental Engineering: MEng, MS, PhD
Faculty and Instructors
* Indicates this faculty member is the recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award.
Mohamad Hallal, Assistant Teaching Professor. Geotechnical engineering, subsurface imaging, natural hazards engineering, data science, computation.
Norman Abrahamson, Adjunct Professor. Civil and environmental engineering, earthquake ground motions, spectral attenuation relations .
Research Profile
Lisa Alvarez-Cohen, Professor. Environmental microbiology, biodegradation of environmental contaminants, microbial carbon cycling, molecular tools for microbial ecology, metagenomics, biological hazardous waste treatment, bioremediation of groundwater pollutants such as PCE, TCE, DCE, VC, TCA, DCA, MTBE, BTEX, PBDEs, NDMA, Dioxane, PFOS, PFOA, fire-fighting foams.
Research Profile
Joshua Apte, Associate Professor. Energy, civil infrastructure and climate, environmental engineering.
Research Profile
Francisco Armero, Professor. Computational mechanics, nonlinear continuum mechanics.
Research Profile
Adda Athanasopoulos-Zekkos, Associate Professor. Energy, civil infrastructure and climate, geosystems, multi-hazard stressors on geotechnical engineering infrastructure, age-related deterioration, population growth and densification, natural and human-made hazards, and new demands from climate change.
Research Profile
Roger Bales, Adjunct Professor. Hydrology, water resources, climate, earth science, environmental engineering .
Research Profile
Alexandre M. Bayen, Professor. Transportation, modelling and control of distributed parameters systems, large scale infrastructure systems, water distribution.
Research Profile
Tracy Becker, Associate Professor. Structural dynamics and design, earthquake engineering, isolation and other high performance systems, use of novel materials in design.
Research Profile
Jonathan D. Bray, Professor. Earthquake engineering, geotechnical engineering, physical and numerical modeling, environmental geotechnics.
Research Profile
Maya Carrasquillo, Assistant Professor. Energy, Civil Infrastructure and Climate, Environmental Engineering .
Research Profile
Michael J. Cassidy, Professor. Traffic and transportation operations, traffic control.
Research Profile
Fotini Katopodes Chow, Professor. Environmental fluid mechanics, large-eddy simulation, turbulence modeling, atmospheric boundary layer flow, flow over complex terrain, urban dispersion modeling, coupled land-atmosphere modeling, wind energy applications .
Research Profile
Paolo D'Odorico, Professor. Ecohydrology, Surface Hydrology, Ecosystem Ecology, Aeolian Processes, Desertification, Stochastic, Nonlinear Environmental Dynamics, Water and Food Security.
Research Profile
Carlos F. Daganzo, Professor. Logistics, networks, urban transportation, traffic flow .
Research Profile
Matthew De Jong, Associate Professor. Structural Engineering, Mechanics and Materials.
Research Profile
Filip C. Filippou, Professor. Nonlinear analysis of structures, finite element analysis, seismic response simulation, seismic evaluation of structures by computer analysis .
Research Profile
Ashok Gadgil, Professor. Fuel-efficient stoves, indoor air quality, energy efficiency, developing countries, drinking water, buildings energy efficiency .
Research Profile
Cynthia Gerlein-Safdi, Assistant Professor. Environmental engineering, ecohydrology, water resources.
Research Profile
Allen Goldstein, Professor. Global change, air pollution, environmental science, biogeochemistry, atmospheric chemistry .
Research Profile
Marta Gonzalez, Associate Professor. Data Science, computer modeling.
Research Profile
Sanjay Govindjee, Professor. Finite element analysis, Theoretical and computational solid mechanics, constitutive theory, micromechanics, polymer mechanics, elastomer modeling, thermomechanics, continuum mechanics, failure analysis .
Research Profile
Mark Hansen, Professor. Transportation economics, policy and planning, air transportation, public transportation .
Research Profile
Robert Harley, Professor. Air pollution, atmospheric chemistry, motor vehicle emissions, ozone, sustainable transportation, air quality, emission inventory, photochemical air quality modeling, gasoline, diesel .
Research Profile
Slav W. Hermanowicz, Professor. Water quality management, biofilms, membrane processes, water reuse, biological processes for water quality, physical sustainability .
Research Profile
Arpad Horvath, Professor. Life cycle assessment, LCA, sustainability, green design, transportation, water, construction, biofuels, energy, environmental management, infrastructure systems .
Research Profile
Cesunica Ivey, Assistant Professor. Environmental Engineering.
Research Profile
Adib Kanafani, Professor. Transportation economics, air transportation, transportation planning, transportation systems analysis, aviation policy and planning, urban and regional planning .
Research Profile
Robert Kayen, Adjunct Professor. GeoSystems.
Research Profile
Thomas W. Kirchstetter, Adjunct Professor. Air pollution .
Research Profile
Dimitrios Konstantinidis, Associate Professor. Structural dynamics, earthquake engineering, nonstructural components, seismic isolation, passive control.
Research Profile
Laurel Larsen, Associate Professor. Hydroecology, landscape dynamics, complex environmental systems, environmental restoration.
Research Profile
Shaofan Li, Professor. Structural mechanics, computational mechanics and computational physics, finite element methods and meshfree particle methods, atomistic simulation and multiscale simulations, nonlinear continuum mechanics, soft matter mechanics, wave propagations, Modeling and simulation of material failures, Nano-mechanics, bio-mechanics and bio-physics, Cellular mechanics, micromechanics & composite materials .
Research Profile
Baoxia Mi, Associate Professor. Membrane separation, transport and interfacial phenomena, physicochemical processes, drinking water purification and wastewater reuse, desalination, environmental nanotechnology, and innovative applications of membrane technology to renewable energy generation, public health protection, and_hygiene and sanitation improvement for underdeveloped and disaster-ridden regions .
Research Profile
Jack P. Moehle, Professor. Earthquake engineering, structural engineering, reinforced concrete, performance-based earthquake engineering, high-rise buildings, lifeline systems, rehabilitation (retrofitting), laboratory testing .
Research Profile
Maria Laura Delle Monache, Assistant Professor. Systems, Transportation Engineering.
Research Profile
Paulo J.M. Monteiro, Professor. Concrete behavior, structural materials .
Research Profile
Khalid M. Mosalam, Professor. Earthquake engineering, concrete and masonry structures, fracture mechanics, damage mechanics .
Research Profile
Scott Moura, Associate Professor. Optimal control, PDE control, estimation, adaptive control, dynamic system modeling, energy management, battery management systems, vehicle-to-grid, smart grid .
Research Profile
Kara L. Nelson, Professor. Water and wastewater treatment, water reuse, detection and inactivation of pathogens in water and sludge, appropriate technologies .
Research Profile
Claudia P. Ostertag, Professor. Fiber reinforced concrete, mechanical behavior, toughening mechanisms .
Research Profile
Amy Pickering, Assistant Professor. Environmental engineering, intersection of engineering and global health to design, evaluate, and disseminate novel technologies and strategies to improve child health in low-resource settings.
Research Profile
James W. Rector, Professor. Geophysics, Oil and Gas, Unconventional Shale Gas Reservoirs, Horizontal Drilling, Fracking, Near Surface Seismology, Tunnel Detection, Treasure Hunting, and Geophysical Archaeology, Borehole Seismology .
Research Profile
Michael Riemer, Adjunct Professor. Static evaluation, dynamic evaluation of soil properties, constitutive behavior of sands, liquefaction of unusual soils .
Research Profile
Yoram N. Rubin, Professor. Risk assessment, hydrogeology, contaminant transport, geostatistics .
Research Profile
Stefano Schiavon, Professor. Sustainable building design, indoor environment quality, mechanical systems, building energy efficiency, thermal comfort well-being, post-occupancy evaluation, indoor air quality.
Research Profile
David L. Sedlak, Professor. Fate and transport of and transformation of chemicals in the aquatic environment, water reuse and water recycling, urban water infrastructure, engineered treatment wetlands .
Research Profile
Raja Sengupta, Professor. Transportation, wireless communications, inertial navigation for vehicle systems .
Research Profile
Susan Shaheen, Professor In-Residence. Policy analysis, behavioral research, transportation, energy/environment, mobility and sharing economy, ITS (smartphone apps, automated vehicles), alternative fuels, and mobility for special populations (accessibility) .
Research Profile
Nicholas Sitar, Professor. Geotechnical earthquake engineering, wireless sensors, seismic slope stability, seismic earth pressure, rock erosion, groundwater remediation .
Research Profile
Kenichi Soga, Professor. Infrastructure sensing and geomechanics for energy and sustainability .
Research Profile
Mark Stacey, Professor. Environmental fluid mechanics, transport and mixing in stratified flows, dynamics of estuaries, lakes and the coastal ocean, interdisciplinary applications of environmental fluid mechanics .
Research Profile
Robert L. Taylor, Professor. Computational mechanics, mechanics of solids, finite element methods, finite element software .
Research Profile
Iris D. Tommelein, Professor. Lean construction, lean production, design management, sustainability, supply-chain management, life-cycle engineering, civil infrastructure systems, adaptive project leadership, megaproject delivery, construction process engineering, integrated project delivery IPD, building information modeling BIM, virtual design and construction VDC .
Research Profile
Evan A. Variano, Professor. Fluid mechanics, turbulence, wetlands, imaging, plankton, sediment transport .
Research Profile
Joan Walker, Professor. Behavioral modeling, with an expertise in discrete choice analysis and travel behavior .
Research Profile
Ziqi Wang, Assistant Professor. Structural engineering.
Research Profile
Dimitrios Zekkos, Professor. GeoSystems, robotics and informatics, seismic response of landfills, energy recovery from landfills through biodegradation, multi-scale frameworks for system-level stability and landslide assessments, in-situ and laboratory testing of static and dynamic properties of earth materials.
Research Profile
Affiliated Faculty
Paul Waddell, Professor. UrbanSim, land use models, transportation models, urban sustainability.
Research Profile
Lecturers
* Khalid Kadir, Continuing Lecturer. Engineering pedagogy, the political economy of public higher education, water and sanitation in humanitarian contexts. .
Research Profile
Jasenka Rakas, Continuing Lecturer. Availability and reliability of communications, navigation and surveillance systems, airport systems planning and design, airport and airspace capacity and delay analysis, systems modeling and performance analysis, National Airspace System (NAS) infrastructure performance and investment analysis, air traffic flow management, cost/benefit analysis, simulation modeling and analysis, human factors and cognitive psychology .
Research Profile
Ronald Shumway, Continuing Lecturer. Legal Resolution of Construction-Related Disputes.
Research Profile
Emeritus Faculty
James M. Anderson, Professor Emeritus. Detection of faultline movements, modern surveying techniques, image processing applications, photogrammetry.
Research Profile
Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl, Professor Emeritus. Structural engineering, bridges, buildings, eathquake engineering, collapse of structures, Steel structures, welds, bolts, protection of buildings and bridges against terrorist attacks, self anchored suspension Bay Bridge, fatigue and fracture of structures, failure analysis, gusset plates, base plates, seismic design, ethics in engineering, registered professional engineer, long span bridges, skyscrapers, World Trade Center collapse studies.
Research Profile
Robert G. Bea, Professor Emeritus. Risk management, risk assessment, reliability, human and organizational factors, quality assurance, quality control, design, construction, maintenance, operations, decommissioning, ocean engineered systems.
Research Profile
Alex Becker, Professor Emeritus. Civil and environmental engineering, geoengineering, airborne electromagnetic sensing systems, detection and classification of buried metallic objects, high frequency impedance measurements for non-invasive permittivity determination.
Research Profile
Jack G. Bouwkamp, Professor Emeritus.
* Anil K. Chopra, Professor Emeritus. Earthquake engineering, structural dynamics.
Research Profile
George A. Cooper, Professor Emeritus. Novel drilling methods, drill bit design, borehole stability, cryogenic drilling, diamond tooth wear, electro-osmosis to reduce bit balling .
Research Profile
Keith C. Crandall, Professor Emeritus. Construction engineering.
Research Profile
Armen Der Kiureghian, Professor Emeritus. Risk analysis, earthquake engineering, structural reliability, random vibrations .
Research Profile
John A. Dracup, Professor Emeritus. Hydroclimatology, water resources systems, surface water hydrology .
Research Profile
Mostafa Foda, Professor Emeritus. Continental shelf water dynamics, seabed mechanics .
Research Profile
Steven D. Glaser, Professor Emeritus. Wireless sensor networks, ecological monitoring, rock mechanics, geophysics, nano-seismology .
Research Profile
Richard E. Goodman, Professor Emeritus. Rock mechanics, characterization and analysis of discontinuous rocks .
Research Profile
Alexander J. Horne, Professor Emeritus. Water pollution, behavior of pollutants in an aqueous environment .
Research Profile
C. William Ibbs, Professor Emeritus. Strategic trends, strategic planning, construction industry, project control, management systems, construction disputes, management of engineering and contruction projects, labor productivity, construction accounting and project finance .
Research Profile
James M. Kelly, Professor Emeritus. Seismic response of structures, seismic-resistant design .
Research Profile
Jacob Lubliner, Professor Emeritus. Plasticity, viscoelasticity .
Research Profile
Samer M. Madanat, Professor Emeritus. Transportation systems analysis, transportation infrastructure management, transportation sustainability .
Research Profile
Adolf D. May, Professor Emeritus. Operations, control systems, simulation modeling, detector systems, capacity Analysis, HOV Systems .
Research Profile
* James K. Mitchell, Professor Emeritus.
Carl L. Monismith, Professor Emeritus. Pavement design, pavement rehabilitation, asphalt paving technology, transportation facilities design .
Research Profile
H. Frank Morrison, Professor Emeritus. Applied geophysics, electromagnetic methods, electrical properties of rocks, soils, field surveys and interpretation .
Research Profile
William W Nazaroff, Professor Emeritus. Indoor air quality, pollutant-surface interactions, transport/mixing phenomena, aerosols, semivolatile organic compounds, bioaerosol dynamics, environmental tobacco smoke, source characterization, control techniques, exposure analysis .
Research Profile
* Juan M. Pestana, Professor Emeritus. Geotechnical engineering, environmental geotechnics, constitutive modeling of soil behavior, soil properties, numerical modeling of soil-structure interaction, geotechnical earthquake engineering .
Research Profile
Graham H. Powell, Professor Emeritus. Bridges, earthquake engineering, computing, buidings .
Research Profile
* Raymond B. Seed, Professor Emeritus. Geotechnical earthquake engineering, soil/structure interaction, slope stability, performance of dams, waste fills.
Research Profile
Zuo-Jun Max Shen, Professor Emeritus. Logistics, supply chain design and management, inventory management, auction mechanism design .
Research Profile
Alexander Skabardonis, Professor In-Residence Emeritus. Transportation, traffic engineering, traffic control systems, traffic management, the environment .
Research Profile
Rodney J. Sobey, Professor Emeritus. Civil and environmental engineering, coastal hydrodynamics, estuaries and wetlands, wave theory, hydrodynamic circulation in the coastal-zone, transient response modes of water bodies .
Research Profile
Garrison Sposito, Professor Emeritus.
William C. Webster, Professor Emeritus. Nonlinear coupled motions of offshore structures, operations research, shallow-water wave mechanics .
Research Profile
Edward L. Wilson, Professor Emeritus. Computational mechanics, civil and environmental engineering, systems, numerical methods, analysis and design, large structural, field testing of structures .
Research Profile
Contact Information
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
760 Davis Hall
Phone: 510-642-3261
Fax: 510-643-5264