Research

Our faculty is well known and respected by their peers for the high quality of their research. Explore how they're pushing the boundaries of civil engineering and engineering mechanics.

Columbia Engineering Student Research Program

There are many opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students to become involved in research with faculty at Columbia Engineering.

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Fluid Mechanics

Transportation engineering

Multi-Hazard Risk Assessment and Mitigation

Computational Mechanics

Advanced Materials

Safety & Reliability

Geotechnical Engineering

Transportation Engineering

Transportation engineering is the application of technology and scientific principles to the design, operation, planning and management of transportation infrastructure, mobility service, traffic, and travelers for various travel modes, in order to provide for the safe, efficient, rapid, comfortable, convenient, economical, and environmentally sustainable movement of people and goods.

Multi-Hazard Risk Assessment and Mitigation

Research of Multi-Hazard Risk Assessment and Mitigation explores risk assessment and risk management of civil infrastructure subjected to natural and man-made hazards. These hazards include earthquakes, floods, wind and blasts. Civil infrastructure includes buildings, bridges, aboveground and underground transportation facilities, etc.

Computational Mechanics

Computational Mechanics is the intersection of mechanics, applied mathematics, and computer science, which is aimed at developing new methods for solving computationally-challenging problems in science and engineering.

Advanced Materials

Research in Advanced Materials explores novel processing, characterization and design techniques for construction materials to build, repair, monitor, and even power our surrounding infrastructure. Material systems include polymers, composites, cement-based materials and concrete, and asphalts.

Fluid Mechanics

Fluid mechanics is the branch of classical physics and mathematics concerned with the response of matter that continuously deforms (flows) when subjected to a shear stress. The subject can be divided into fluid statics - the study of fluids at rest, and fluid dynamics - the study of the effect of forces on fluid motion. Fluid flows impact transport and mixing (of materials or properties) in the environment and in industrial processes, and are hence of interest across a wide range of fields - including engineering, physics, mathematics and biology.

Geotechnical Engineering

Geotechnical Engineering deals with the study of soil behavior, and the design and analysis of natural and man-made soil structures. Many constructions are conducted on less ideal ground conditions that may need to be improved. Construction of infrastructures and residential buildings may encounter unstable slopes, thus retaining walls and reinforced soil technologies are often used to stabilize them.

Safety and Reliability

Research in Safety and Reliability explores primarily probabilistic and statistical approaches for the analysis, optimization, design, construction, maintenance and operations of structures and other engineering systems, such as buildings, bridges, earth structures, offshore facilities, and nuclear structural systems.