Princeton University

The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Princeton is small, dynamic, and growing.  We have recently hired five new faculty members: Sigrid Adriaenssens, Elie Bou-Zeid, Kelly Caylor, Branko Glisic, and Mark Zondlo.  Each adds substantial strength to our programs in Environmental Engineering and Water Resources (EEWR) and Materials, Mechanics, and Sturctures (MMS).  As a department, we continue to work on research problems in areas of national and international importance, including carbon mitigation and climate change, design and analysis of structures under extreme loading, ecohydrology of water-limited ecosystems with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa, advanced materials for civil engineering applications, development of new environmental and structural sensor networks, biogeochemistry of wetlands and riparian environments, and retrospective analysis of structures with a focus on design, form, and function.  In all of these areas, we have faculty members working at the forefront of their fields, and students and research staff who are producing outstanding research.  We are also introducing innovative new teaching initiatives, including a full semester of courses in the field at the Mpala research station in Kenya .  This special field semester will be available to CEE majors beginning Spring 2009.  Through all of these efforts, we are transforming the way we educate our students, and providing unique opportunities for our faculty and students to solve some of the largest societal problems that we face.

Our five new faculty members join the existing CEE faculty members, many of whom continue to be recognized for their outstanding work.  For example, David Billington is the recipient of the 2008 Distinguished Award of Merit from the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC).  David joins a truly distinguished list of previous recipients, including President Eisenhower and Neil Armstrong.  Catherine Peters has been named a member of the EPA Science Advisory Board, and is also working with an enthusiastic group of undergraduate student on green retrofitting of buildings, based on energy auditing methods they have been developing.  Eric Wood recently received the Dalton Medal from the European Geophysical Union "in recognition of his outstanding contribution towards integrating the Earth sciences into the science of hydrology".  George Scherer received the Brunauer Award from the Cements Division of the American Ceramic Society, for the best paper on cement/concrete published by ACerS in 2007 (for a paper on salt scaling published with his former student, John Valenza).  Ignacio Rodriguez-Iturbe received the "Blusa del Agua" from the Tribunal de las Aguas de Valencia in Spain, and more recently was named to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.  Jim Smith, who was part of the team that received the 2007 Latrobe Prize, has been involved with measurements of air quality in Beijing during the 2008 Summer Olympics.  Maria Garlock and David Billington have created a major art museum exhibit titled Felix Candela: Engineer, Builder, Structural Artist.  I have been named the 2008 Darcy Lecturer by the National Ground Water Association, and as a Contributing Author to one of the special IPCC reports of Working Group Three, I also share, with thousands of my colleagues, the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the IPCC.  Finally, in a recent ranking of faculty scholarly productivity involving more than 350 PhD granting institutions in the United States , Princeton's CEE department ranked first in both the Civil Engineering and the Environmental Engineering categories.

Our students also continue to do spectacular things.  For example, Kira Schiavello '08 received the Sol Seid Award for Excellence from the Professional Engineering in Construction of New Jersey; Sara Piaskowy '07 won both the Engineering Award and the Grand Prize at the University-wide Undergraduate Research Symposium, for her senior thesis work on bayside flooding in low elevation regions of Seaside Park, NJ; and in addition to their outstanding research work, several of our graduate students have exhibited their artwork, most recently  Trenton Franz and Alex Lester showing photographs of African landscapes.  The photos were taken while they were in Kenya doing field work as part of our Water in Africa project.  Additional profiles of our graduate students can be found here.  Overall, our faculty, students, and staff are at the forefront of important research, and are broadly recognized for their truly outstanding contributions.

Within our department, we  look forward to the many exciting opportunities that lie ahead as we continue to build Civil and Environmental Engineering at Princeton .  If you are interested in Princeton CEE for graduate studies, please click here; to read profiles of a few of our current graduate students, click here; and to send email to me, click here.  We always welcome comments and suggestions, especially from our distinguished alumni!

With Best Wishes,
Michael Celia
CEE Chair