A Season of Hurricanes and Wildfires Is Upon Us. Are We Prepared?
Experts across Duke are urgently thinking through ways for communities to become more resilient in the face of disaster.
Signature Research Topics
Creating a healthier, safer and more sustainable world
Duke’s civil and environmental engineering research efforts focus on complex earth, water and built systems. With collaborators around the globe, we apply engineering methods to find solutions to significant challenges—aiming for a healthier, safer and more sustainable world.
Major Research Areas
Computational Mechanics & Scientific Computing
Developing precise algorithms to study and solve complex problems governed by the laws of mechanics.
Environmental Health Engineering
Studying connections between human health and ecosystem health, to understand risks and to build resilience in both.
Geomechanics & Geophysics for Energy and the Environment
Exploring issues in underground engineering, resource use and environmental hazards.
Hydrology & Fluid Dynamics
Focused on fundamental problems and critical challenges in fluid dynamics and water resources.
Risk & Resilient Systems
Seeking new and better ways to estimate and quantify the dynamics and uncertainty in engineered and natural systems.
Latest Research News
New Hubs Represent “Big Bets” on Interdisciplinarity at Duke
Leanne Gilbertson is leading the new “Duke Critical Minerals Hub” to examine their full life cycle from extraction and mining to processing, use and reuse.
Drones, Data and Discovery: Mapping Change in Antarctica
Duke engineering students join an interdisciplinary Bass Connections team diving deep into a vast wealth of visual data of Antarctica collected by drones.