Chair    George F. List
Coordinator of Undergraduate Studies (Civil and Environmental Programs)
Simeon Komisar
Coordinator of Graduate Studies (Civil Program)   Jacob Fish
Coordinator of Graduate Studies (Environmental Program)   Simeon Komisar
Department Home Page   http://www.cee.rpi.edu

Civil and environmental engineers are responsible for providing the world’s constructed facilities and the infrastructure on which modern civilization depends. These facilities can be large and complex and require that the engineer be broadly trained and able to deal with the latest technologies.

Civil engineers focus on the analysis, design, construction, maintenance, and operation of large-scale physical systems. To ensure the proper construction and care of these complex systems and environments, Rensselaer civil engineers develop a full range of skills in design, analysis, fabrication, communication, management, and teamwork. The current rebuilding of the world’s roads, bridges, water and sewer systems, and other physical facilities has heightened society’s awareness of the profession and given it significant prominence. The growing panoply of sensors, instrumentation, intelligent facilities, and new materials is also highlighting the high-tech character of the discipline, creating new educational challenges and redefining the skill set that civil engineers need to succeed.

At Rensselaer, civil engineering has a long and distinguished history. In 1835, the Institute became the first U.S. school to issue a civil engineering degree. Among its graduates are William Gurley (1839) and Lewis E. Gurley (1845) partners in W&LE Gurley, Troy, N.Y., one of the first manufacturers of precision surveying instruments. Other world-renowned Rensselaer civil engineering graduates include:

• Francis Collingwood, Jr. (1855), honored by civil engineering’s Collingwood Prize
• Washington Roebling (1857), builder of the Brooklyn Bridge
• Seijiro Hirai (1878), a president of the Imperial Railways, Japan
• George Ferris (1881), designer of the Ferris wheel
• Milton Brumer (1923), construction manager for the Verrazano Narrows Bridge
• Werner Ammann (1928), former partner, Ammann and Whitney
• Clay Bedford, Sr. (1925), general supervisor of the construction of the Bonneville and Grand Coulee Dams
• Ralph Peck (1934), co-author with Karl Terzaghi of the internationally-known book Soil Mechanics in Engineering Practice

Today, Rensselaer civil engineers continue to be found at all levels in both private and public sectors throughout the world.

A long-standing tradition at Rensselaer is educational programs in environmental problem solving. An early contribution to this field was the water analysis work of William Pitt Mason (1874), the pioneer of such activities in the U.S. in the late 1800s. Edward J. Kilcawley, a Rensselaer civil engineering professor who introduced environmental engineering as an option in the mid-1940s and as degree program in the mid-1950s, contributed visionary environmental engineering concepts.

In addition to those in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, there are faculty members with teaching and research interests in environmental problem solving in the Department of Chemical Engineering. The same is true in Departments of Biology, Chemistry, Earth and Environmental Sciences, and Mathematical Sciences, all of which fall within Rensselaer’s School of Science.

Research and Innovation Initiatives

Construction Engineering (Civil)
This area focuses on project management, construction scheduling, resource management, in-field fabrication, and administrative paradigms (especially design-build). Information technology facilitates the construction process by providing tools useful in all of these areas and others, such as the creation of as-built plans.

Earthquake Engineering (Civil)
Rensselaer’s earthquake engineering research program is concerned with seismic analysis and design methodologies that mitigate the negative impact of earthquakes on buildings, bridges, and pipelines (water, sewer, gas, and oil). It also focuses on analytical relationships that support decision-making and advance the state of the art in design codes, a key to future sustainability and durability. In these areas, Rensselaer’s earthquake engineering research is among the best in the world. The Institute has a major geotechnical centrifuge facility and is in the process of building a medium-scale shaker table. The geotechnical centrifuge facility, fourth largest in the U.S. and among the twenty largest in the world, brings significant pre-eminence to the Institute. Rensselaer was recently selected as one of ten sites that will receive long-term NSF support as part of the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation initiative. Of major import in future research will be model-based simulation (using the centrifuge to extend existing simulation models and create new multiscale models), Web-based teleobservation and teleobservation (especially of a new robotic arm being built in collaboration with faculty from Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering), and wireless sensors, using MEMs and other microelectronic devices (e.g., to unobtrusively instrument experimental specimens).

Transportation Engineering (Civil)
This area of research includes design, analysis, maintenance, and operation of transportation systems and facilities; intelligent transportation systems, especially highway networks, goods distribution systems, and transit systems; real-time, multiobjective network management and control, including route guidance and dynamic traffic assignment; signal control systems; network management strategies; multiobjective routing and scheduling; and logistics decision making under uncertainty.

Computational Mechanics (Civil)
Studies involve the development of automated finite element modeling techniques, adaptive analysis procedures, development of adaptive multiscale solution techniques, qualification and modeling of engineering idealizations for analysis and design, design systems using knowledge-base techniques, prototype systems for applications including discrete crack propagation, forging simulations, multiple-scale modeling of composite materials and electronic packages, and unsteady aerodynamics.

Infrastructure Engineering (Civil)
Under development are analytical methodologies and software tools for preservation, restoration, and renewal of large distributed systems such as roadways, bridges, pipelines, power distribution networks, and bridge and pavement management systems. Additional studies include remote sensing condition assessment, deterioration modeling and performance prediction, vulnerability assessment, risk analysis, reliability-centered maintenance, and capital investment planning.

Pollutant Fate and Transport (Environmental)
Research areas are conservative, semi-Lagrangian models of fate and transport in fluvial system, using scalable parallel algorithms for computation, probabilistic analysis of pollutant spills, influence of transient storage zones on fluvial fate and transport predictions, assessment of pathogen loading and transport in water supplies and treatment systems, fate of hydrophobic organics in sediment, environmental chemistry of PAHs.

Water Treatment (Environmental)
Researchers investigate the influence of natural organic matter properties and water chemistry on the formation of disinfection byproducts, understanding fouling mechanisms in the use of membrane processes in water treatment, membrane modifications for water treatment, adsorption processes and hybrid processes for removal of DBP precursors

Waste treatment (Environmental)
Studies focus on aerobic and anaerobic biological treatment reactors for municipal and industrial wastes; high strength anaerobic waste treatment in fluidized bed bioreactors with energy recovery, nutrient removal systems, hazardous waste treatment reactors, biofilters.

Site Remediation and Bioremediation (Environmental)
Research areas include combined advanced oxidation and biological treatment for sediment and soil slurry systems, in-situ degradation of chlorinated organics in groundwater, and solid phase treatment reactors for soils, slurries, and municipal solid wastes.

Environmental Systems (Environmental)
Under investigation are genetic algorithms for model calibration and optimization in environmental engineering, adaptive optimal control of treatment reactors, molecular modeling in environmental chemistry, and structure activity relationships

Research Facilities
Rensselaer’s centrifuge was commissioned in 1989 and began conducting physical model simulations of soil and soil structure systems subjected to in-flight earthquake shaking in 1991. In over a decade of successful operation, the facility has published results of some 360 earthquake-related model simulations, served as the basis for 12 Ph.D. theses at Rensselaer (10 Ph.D. theses in the last five years), and contributed to Institute faculty and student research as well as that of dozens of visiting scholars and outside users from the U.S., Asia, Europe, and Latin America. It has also provided data and research results to many people and organizations around the world. This centrifuge earthquake research has been conducted with two existing one-dimensional in-flight shakers, which can accommodate 90 kg and 400 kg payloads respectively.

The next-generation earthquake engineering capability for the Rensselaer centrifuge includes 1) a 2-D in-flight earthquake shaker (two prototype horizontal components) and associated 2-D laminar box container to allow for more realistic 2-D modeling; 2) a four degrees of freedom (4-D) robot capable of performing in-flight operations such as construction and excavation, pile driving, ground remediation, cone penetration, and static and cyclic loading tests without stopping the centrifuge; 3) a networked data acquisition system with Internet teleobservation/teleoperation capability, to be linked to the high-speed Rensselaer gigabit Ethernet backbone; 4) two high-speed cameras and image processing software; 5) development of a new generation of advanced and improved sensors capable of providing a better resolution of the measured model response; and 6) other equipment aimed at increasing the capability of the centrifuge to test a greater number and wider variety of earthquake engineering models.

A major upgrade in lab equipment and space for environmental engineering research and teaching has occurred through the establishment of the Keck Water Quality Laboratory, the National Science Foundation Environmental Colloid and Particle Laboratory, and the refurbishment of the Environmental Engineering Teaching Laboratory suite. Analytical equipment in these labs provides the capability for analysis and investigation of a wide variety of industrial processes, treatment processes, and polluted environments. This equipment gives students experience and expertise in treatability and toxicity studies, design and operation of bench-scale treatment systems, and investigation of a wide range of environmental quality parameters. The fate of specific compounds in the environment and in treatment processes can be analyzed by UV-VIS spectrophotometry, high pressure liquid chromatography, gas-liquid and gas chromatography with a number of specific and sensitive detectors, including electron capture, flame ionization, thermal conductivity, and mass spectral. Metals analyses by atomic absorption spectrophotometry and elemental analyses are also available. A complete suite of water quality monitoring equipment, field sampling systems, and geographical information system tools are available. Computational capabilities are widely accessible not only throughout the campus, but also in research laboratories, as well.

Faculty

Departmental faculty listings are accurate as of the date generated for inclusion in this catalog. For the most up-to-date listing of faculty positions, including end-of-year promotions, please refer to the Faculty Roster section of this catalog, which is current as of the May 2002 Board of Trustees meeting.

Professors
Clesceri, N.L.—Ph.D. (University of Wisconsin); advanced waste treatment, environmentally sound manufacturing, sediment decontamination.
Dobry, R.—Sc.D. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology); geotechnical engineering, soil dynamics, earthquake engineering, seismic analysis.
Dvorak, G.J.—Ph.D. (Brown University); mechanics of solids, composite materials and structures, fracture and fatigue.
Feeser, L.J.—P.E., Ph.D. (Carnegie Mellon University); structures, computer applications and computer graphics, computer-aided design, structural optimization.
Fish, J.—Ph.D. (Northwestern University); computational mechanics, finite element methods, micromechanics, mathematical modeling.
Grivas, D.A.—Ph.D. (Purdue University); infrastructure engineering and management, nondestructive evaluation, mathematical morphology, image analysis, probabilistic modeling, risk analysis, reliability centered maintenance, mobility engineering.
List, G.F.—P.E., Ph.D. (University of Pennsylvania); intelligent transportation systems, sensors, instrumentation and control, multiobjective.
O’Rourke, M.J.—P.E., Ph.D. (Northwestern University); structures, lifeline earthquake engineering, snow loading on structures.
Shephard, M.S.—Ph.D. (Cornell University); computational mechanics, parallel processing, adaptive finite element techniques, automatic mesh generation.
Wallace, W.A.—Ph.D. (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute); decision support systems, the process of modeling, environmental management, disaster management.
Zimmie, T.F.—P.E., Ph.D. (University of Connecticut); geoenvironmental engineering, geotechnical engineering, groundwater hydrology, flow through porous media, landfills, centrifuge modeling, geosynthetics.

Associate Professors
Kilduff, J.—Ph.D. (University of Michigan); physicochemical processes, separations and recovery processes in water and wastewater treatment, effects of adsorption and mass-transfer on pollutant fate and transport in natural systems, membrane processes for water quality control.
Symans, M.—Ph.D. (State University of New York at Buffalo); structural dynamics, earthquake engineering, seismic isolation and energy dissipation systems, structural vibration control.

Assistant Professors
Manson, J.R.—Ph.D. (University of Glasgow, Scotland); mathematical modeling of flow, fate and transport in fluvial and lacustrine systems, environmental hydrology fluid mechanics, applied mathematics, episodic pollution.
Nyman, M.C.—Ph.D. (Purdue University); fate and transport of hydrophobic organic contaminants in natural systems, environmental chemistry.
Zeghal, M.—Ph.D. (Princeton University); soil dynamics and geotechnical earthquake engineering, computational geomechanics, geotechnical system identification and seismic response monitoring, damage diagnosis and nondestructive evaluation, and seismic risk analyses.

Research Assistant Professor
Abdoun, T.—Ph.D. (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute); geotechnical engineering.
Clinical Associate Professor
Komisar, S.J.—Ph.D. (University of Washington); wastewater treatment, biological processes.

Adjunct Faculty (Civil Program)
Dunn, R.H.P.—M.S. (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute); geotechnical engineering.
Floess, C.—Ph.D. (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute); geotechnical engineering.
Kenneally, D.—B.S. (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute); highway engineering.
O’Malley, D.—M.S. (Central Missouri State University); traffic engineering.
Griggs, F.—D.E. (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute); structural engineering.
Reilly, J.—Ph.D. (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute); transportation systems.

Adjunct Faculty (Environmental Program)
Fossa, A.—M.S., P.E. (Tufts University); environmental engineering, air pollution control and regulation.
Esler, J.—P.E., B.S. (Manhattan College) industrial waste treatment.
Clifford, R., Jr.—M.S. (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) hazardous waste regulation and compliance.
Hetling, L.—P.E., Ph.D. (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) water resources.
Young, K.—J.D. (Harvard Law School) environmental law.

Undergraduate Programs

Baccalaureate Programs

Civil Engineering Curriculum
After completing the core engineering -sequence, a student enters this curriculum and follows a baccalaureate program leading to the B.S. degree or a professional program leading to the M.Eng. degree as well as the B.S.

Undergraduate concentrations include construction, environmental, geotechnical, structural, and transportation engineering. Following the sample four-year schedule is the recommended collection of courses for each of these concentrations.

Subject to other requirements, students may use core engineering electives to accelerate their entrance into the program. Students also may take courses in related fields. Courses bearing the following codes are suggested for particular consideration in consultation with the student’s adviser: ARCH, ECSE, MANE, ENVE, MATH, CSCI, ERTH, and DSES.

The following represents a typical four-year civil engineering program. Students who are convinced that they want to become civil engineers are urged to follow this plan of study in lieu of the general core engineering program presented earlier. Required or strongly recommended core engineering electives are shown for optimum scheduling.

1. For these two courses, order does not matter.
2. Choose either ENGR-1600 or CSCI-1100.
3. For Multidisciplinary Elective I, choose either ENGR-2250 or ENGR-4750. For Multidisciplinary Elective II, choose either ENGR-2350 or ENGR-4300.
4. Can be satisfied with Computer Science I.
5. Text below lists the allowable courses.
6. This course will be fulfilled from a list published at the start of each semester.
7. Can be taken either semester of the senior year.

A minimum of 128 credit hours is required for this curriculum. Nonengineering courses graded satisfactory/unsatisfactory are not included within this 128-credit-hour requirement. The Pass/No Credit option can be used only for free electives with something other than a CIVL or ENVE code and the humanities and social sciences electives. All other courses used to satisfy the degree requirements must be taken on a graded basis.

CE Design Electives and Concentrations
Six credit hours of civil engineering design electives are required. These must be selected from the following list. Any pair of courses can be selected providing that prerequisites are met, but students most often select a combination focused on a specific area of concentration. The terms in which courses are offered are listed in parentheses.

† Special topics course.
†† Offered on availability of faculty.

Civil Engineering Technical Elective   Any of the design electives listed above can be taken as a CE technical elective, provided the necessary prerequisites are met. The following other civil engineering courses can also be selected:

With adviser approval, courses from related disciplines can also be taken. These include architecture, environmental engineering, mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, industrial engineering, and operations research. Graduate level courses (6000-level) are allowable under certain circumstances. A representative list of such courses is as follows:

Humanities or Social Sciences Electives   In this area, the electives are based on the Institute and School of Engineering requirements. Students are urged to elect humanities and social science sequences through which they will obtain adequate breadth and depth in subject areas. Students desiring minors in Humanities and Social Sciences must consult the school or department in which the courses are offered to obtain further information and specific requirements.

Environmental Engineering Curriculum

The Rensselaer bachelor’s program in environmental engineering builds upon a broad base of studies in chemistry, life sciences, and engineering sciences culminating in a uniquely structured course sequence. This sequence of courses, as shown below, is designed around the unit operations and transport processes concepts, together with integrated laboratory theory courses. It culminates in senior design courses. This structure presents a unified educational experience in environmental engineering. A minimum of 128 credit hours is required for this curriculum.

1. May be taken in any order in the first two semesters.
2. Special section for environmental engineering students.
3. Elective must be an engineering course with design content (e.g., ENVE-4200, ENVE-4240, ENVE-4210, ENGR-4760, ENVE-4110, ENVE-4260, ENVE- 4310). Courses are selected in consultation with the program adviser.
4. Multidisciplinary engineering. elective: Must be an engineering course, (e.g., DSES-4260, ENGR-4300, ENGR-2530, ENGR-2830).
5. This course will be fulfilled from a published list at the start of each semester and can be taken either semester.

Concentrations
In consultation with the program adviser, students may choose from four areas of concentration, emphasizing water quality control, air resources, environmental systems, and solid and hazardous wastes.

Minor Programs

The department offers minors in both civil and environmental engineering.

Civil Engineering
Students not majoring in civil engineering may receive a minor in this field by completing 15 credit hours selected from the following list (subject to consultation with a department program adviser):

Students pursing this minor must satisfy the prerequisites and/or corequisites for these courses, which may involve other course work. Courses in mechanics and structures taught by the School of Architecture may be substituted for certain core engineering, mathematics, and mechanics/materials courses (with instructor approval).

Environmental Engineering
Students not majoring in environmental engineering may receive a minor in this discipline by completing 15–16 credit hours of study beyond the Introduction to Environmental Engineering course. Typically these courses are chosen in consultation with the environmental engineering program adviser but may include:

Professional Program
This program is intended primarily as a preparation for professional practice. After core engineering study, qualified undergraduates may enter this program, which leads to the B.S. and the M.Eng. degrees. Students follow a coherent program integrating advanced undergraduate and graduate study. An additional 30 credit hours are required beyond the B.S. degree.

Graduate Programs

Graduate programs leading to the M.Eng., M.S., D.Eng., and Ph.D. are available in both curricula. The selection of a graduate program and degree is based on student interest, area of graduate concentration, and satisfaction of prerequisites as indicated below.

Master’s Programs

Master of Science
This research degree is open to students with undergraduate degrees in engineering or the physical or natural sciences. In addition to the satisfactory completion of an approved set of advanced courses, candidates for this degree must complete a six-credit thesis.

In the civil engineering discipline, this thesis must provide documentation of an independent research-related effort and be approved by the student’s faculty adviser. Listed below are recommended core courses in each of the five civil engineering areas of concentration. M.S. candidates typically take all the courses listed below in their chosen area of concentration.

Courses   Courses directly related to all Civil and Environmental Engineering curricula are described in the Course Description section of this catalog under the department codes CIVL and ENVE.