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

Bergin

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…

Boadu

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…

Borsuk

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…

Bragg

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.

Carlson

David Carlson

Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

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

Chaney

Nathaniel Chaney

Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Deshusses

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.

Ferguson

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 and effects of carbon nanomaterials in the aquatic environment, proteomics in environmental toxicology, and mechanisms of…

Gunsch

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…

Hsu-Kim

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.

Jones

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

Kabala

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…

Schaad

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…

Wiesner

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

Di Giulio

Richard T. Di Giulio

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

Hinton

David E. Hinton

Nicholas Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Environmental Quality

Hunt

Dana E. Hunt

Associate Professor of Microbial Ecology

Jeuland

Marc A. Jeuland

Professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy

Kasibhatla

Prasad S. Kasibhatla

Professor in the Division of Environmental Sciences and Policy

Meyer

Joel Meyer

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

Stapleton

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…

Vengosh

Avner Vengosh

Nicholas Distinguished Professor of Environmental Quality

Research Faculty

Satterwhite

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

Hendren

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.

Vallero

Daniel Vallero

Adjunct Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Emeritus Faculty

Medina

Miguel A. Medina

Profesor Emeritus of Civil and Environmental Engineering

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

Peirce

J. Jeffrey Peirce

Associate Professor Emeritus of Civil and Environmental Engineering