CEINT mesocosm facility

Environmental Health Engineering

The environment is critical to human health, and human activity affects the health of ecosystems. Duke's research in environmental health engineering addresses the consequences of society’s production and use of energy and materials, emphasizing approaches to protecting the health of human populations as well as predicting, monitoring and managing impacts on air, water and other global cycles.

Duke CEE works closely with Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment on many research and educational efforts.

Students securing samples from a Trucha fish caught in Pongo

Research Areas

  • Contaminant transport and transformation
  • Environmental sensing
  • Environmental implications of emerging materials
  • Microbiome engineering
  • Environmental toxicology and adaption
  • Data analytics for environment and health
  • Water, sanitation and hygiene
  • Atmospheric transport and chemistry
  • Waste-to-energy and resource recovery
  • Environmental risk assessment
  • Novel technologies for air and water quality
  • Geo-health

MAJOR centers & initiatives

Duke's externally funded research centers and training programs in environmental health engineering include:

Related Study Opportunities

PhD in Environmental Engineering

Offers study tracks in:

Master of Science (MS) in Environmental Engineering

Offers study tracks in:

Master of Engineering (MEng) in Environmental Engineering

Offers concentrations in:

  • Environmental Engineering and Public Policy
  • Environmental Health Engineering
  • Ecohydrology and Environmental Fluid Dynamics

MEng in Risk Engineering

Graduate Certificate & Training Programs

Undergraduate Research

Primary Faculty

Michael Howard Bergin

Sternberg Family Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering

Research Interests: Aerosols are generated by a variety of natural and anthropogenic sources. I am interested in the processes that emit, transform and deposit particulate matter. A current focus of my research is how particles in the atmosphere directly modify the surface radiation balance of the…

Fred K. Boadu

Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Research Interests: How the engineering, environmental and petrophysical properties of porous media (soils, fractured rock, biological tissues) affect measurable geophysical responses, and subsequently develop methodologies by which these properties can be obtained from non-invasive geophysical…

Mark Edward Borsuk

James L. and Elizabeth M. Vincent Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Research Interests: Mathematical models for integrating scientific information on natural, technical, and social systems; Bayesian network modeling with regular application to environmental and human health regulation and decision making; novel approaches to climate change assessment, combining…

Andrew Bragg

Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Research Interests: Fundamental and applied problems in fluid dynamics, especially turbulence, and its role in environmental systems.

David Carlson

Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Research Interests: Machine learning, predictive modeling, health data science, statistical neuroscience

Nathaniel Chaney

Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Jeseth Delgado Vela

Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Research Interests: Biofilms in the urban water cycle, nitrogen cycling microbial communities, public health surveillance via wastewater, and microbial communication in biofilms

Marc Deshusses

Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Research Interests: Design, analysis and application of remediation, waste-to-energy and decentralized sanitation processes, including novel reactors and processes for air, water and solid wastes treatment.

P. Lee Ferguson

Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Research Interests: Environmental analytical chemistry and applications of high resolution mass spectrometry to trace organic contaminant analysis Environmental fate of per-and-polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS) in the environment Polymer additives and microplastics in the aquatic environment…

Leanne Gilbertson

Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Research Interests: My research focuses on manipulating material chemistry in a way that tunes properties for advancing solutions in the areas of food production using fewer resources and lower environmental impact, and water disinfection using inherently benign materials. I study fundamental…

Claudia K. Gunsch

Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Research Interests: Identifying genetic adaptation mechanisms resulting from anthropogenic contaminant exposure; developing biosensors capable of pathogen and contaminant detection in water and air; studying the impact of emerging contaminants on aquatic microbial ecology; and the development of…

Heileen Hsu-Kim

Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Research Interests: Aquatic chemistry and geochemistry, trace element environmental chemistry, nanogeoscience, mercury biogeochemistry, water-particle surface processes.

Akhenaton-Andrew Dhafir Jones

Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Research Interests: Biofilms, cardiovascular infections, infectious diseases, biomaterials, antibiotics, porous media flows, fate and transport of nanomaterials in biofilms, water quality sensors, environmental systems analysis, environmental equity, environmental justice

Zbigniew J. Kabala

Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Research Interests: Dr. Kabala's principal research interests cover stochastic and deterministic theory of fluid flow and contaminant transport in saturated and unsaturated heterogeneous porous media, theory of related measurements, field and laboratory studies in subsurface hydrology, stochastic…

Nicole C Rockey

Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Research Interests: Environmental persistence of endemic and emerging pathogens, mechanisms of virus inactivation, environmental virology, development and identification of engineering controls to reduce infectious disease burden, detection of microbes in air, water, and on surfaces

David E. Schaad

Professor of the Practice of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Research Interests: Sustainable engineering, community development, water and wastewater treatment design, stormwater retention/detention and treatment design, hazardous waste remediation, urban hydrology, constructed wetland and stream restoration design, ecological stabilization, sustainable…

Mark Wiesner

James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Research Interests: Membrane processes, nanostructured materials, transport and fate of nanomaterials in the environment, colloidal and interfacial processes, and environmental systems analysis

Secondary Faculty

Richard T. Di Giulio

Research Professor of Environmental Toxicology in the Division of Environmental Science and Policy

David E. Hinton

Nicholas Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Environmental Quality

Dana E. Hunt

Associate Professor of Microbial Ecology

Marc A. Jeuland

Professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy

Prasad S. Kasibhatla

Professor in the Division of Environmental Sciences and Policy

Joel Meyer

Professor of Environmental Genomics in the Division of Environmental Sciences and Policy

Heather M. Stapleton

Ronie-Richele Garcia-Johnson Distinguished Professor

Research Interests: Human exposure in indoor environments Use of silicone wristbands to measure human exposure Chemical exposures and cancer risk Targeted & Nontargeted mass spectrometry methods applied to environmental samples Effects of halogenated organic contaminants (e.g. BFRs, PFAS) on…

Avner Vengosh

Nicholas Distinguished Professor of Environmental Quality

Research Faculty

Lisa L Satterwhite

Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Research Interests: Satterwhite studies the genomics and epigenetics of environmental exposures in populations with clear health disparity. Her group identified the first genomic signature for pesticide exposure and is developing simple blood tests to diagnose early stage asymptomatic…

Adjunct Faculty

Auffan

Melanie Auffan

Adjunct Assistant Professor

Christine Ogilvie Hendren

Adjunct Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Rose

Jerome C. Rose

Adjunct Associate Professor

Research Interests: Relation between nanostructure of materials and their reactivity and toxicity. Characterization of the structure of ultra-small (colloids and molecular clusters), and/or amorphous and highly divided materials down to the molecular scale.

Daniel Vallero

Adjunct Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Emeritus Faculty

Miguel A. Medina

Profesor Emeritus of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Research Interests: Environmental engineering, cyberinfrastructure networks, sensors, geotropospheric interactions, engineering systems optimization.

J. Jeffrey Peirce

Associate Professor Emeritus of Civil and Environmental Engineering