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Rice University Civil and Environmental Engineering

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Rice University Civil and Environmental Engineering

Top-ranked Rice University educates the civil and environmental engineering leaders of tomorrow and contribute to solving societal challenges.

Welcome to Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) at Rice University. CEE at Rice is about building bridges—both figuratively and literally. Our researchers are building bridges into the future with their efforts to contribute to solutions of challenges of global, national, and local importance. We provide a rigorous, coherent curriculum that gives students a strong understanding of biological, chemical, physical, economic, and social systems that affect engineering research and practice.

11/03/2026

Join us for the Civil and Environmental Engineering Seminar Series featuring Dr. Sergio Pellegrino, Director of the Booth-Kresa Department of Aerospace and Joyce and Kent Kresa Professor of Aerospace and Civil Engineering at the California Institute of Technology , presenting “In-Space Assembly of Large Structures.”

Today’s technology for large space structures relies on building on Earth, packaging for launch, and deploying in orbit. Dr. Pellegrino will discuss how recent advances in advanced manufacturing and autonomous robotic systems make alternative construction methods feasible, such as manufacturing components in space or assembling pre-made modular parts into structures. The talk will focus on two examples, a telescope primary mirror built by crawling robots and a reflector antenna assembled by a stationary robotic truss builder, and will present a small-scale in-space demonstration currently under way.

📅 Thursday, November 5, 2026
⏰ 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM
📍 Ryon Engineering Building, Room 201, Rice University

https://events.rice.edu/event/444653-cee-seminar-dr-sergio-pellegrino-in-space-assembly-of

10/27/2026

🗣️ Rice Civil and Environmental Engineering is hiring!

We invite applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Artificial Intelligence for Sustainability and Resilience, part of a coordinated faculty hiring initiative within the George R. Brown School of Engineering and Computing. We are looking for scholars who combine deep expertise in civil and environmental engineering with work that applies and advances AI to build infrastructure and systems that are sustainable, adaptive and resilient.

Areas of interest include:
🔹 Resilient and sustainable structures
🔹 AI-driven computational mechanics and materials
🔹 Intelligent and adaptive infrastructure
🔹 Water, energy and environmental systems

When applying, please select Civil and Environmental Engineering as your first preferred home department.

👉 Explore the full posting and application instructions: https://cee.rice.edu/faculty-position-artificial-intelligence-sustainability-and-resilience
👉 Applications received by December 1, 2026, will receive full consideration. Review will continue until the positions are filled.

10/26/2026

🗣️ Calling all Rice University Civil and Environmental Engineering alumni!

Join the ASCE Student Chapter for a casual mixer-style lunch with fellow graduates, current students and faculty.

Whether you’re back on campus for Alumni Weekend or just looking to catch up with the CEE community, come share a meal and expand your network.

📅 Friday, November 13, 2026
⏰ 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM
📍 Ralph S. O’Connor Building, 5th Floor, Rice University

Register to attend: https://lnkd.in/gneixms

10/23/2026

Research led by Qilin Li could soon turn industrial wastewater into a source of the rare earth elements that power electric vehicles, wind turbines and MRI machines.

Li, the Karl F. Hasselmann Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and first author Yiming Liu, a former Rice postdoctoral researcher now at South Dakota State University, modified a class of Nobel Prize-winning ultraporous materials called metal-organic frameworks to selectively capture neodymium, gadolinium and dysprosium. The engineered material captured at least twice as much neodymium and gadolinium as previously reported for the same framework and kept its performance even when iron was present at 100 times the concentration of the target elements.

With rare earth supply chains concentrated in only a few places worldwide, recovering these elements from waste streams could offer a more sustainable alternative to current extraction methods and help secure materials critical to clean energy, health care and aerospace.

Read more: https://news.rice.edu/news/2026/rice-researchers-modify-nobel-prize-winning-material-recover-valuable-rare-earth-elements

10/23/2026

10/15/2026

Research led by Avantika Gori could soon help insurers and communities better understand hurricane risk.

Gori, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice, and co-investigator Guha Balakrishnan, assistant professor of Rice University Electrical & Computer Engineering, are using NASA’s AI model Prithvi-WxC to build an open-source tool that simulates about 10,000 realistic tropical cyclones.

The tool will produce detailed wind and rainfall estimates and assess how hazards may change under different climate scenarios, helping reduce uncertainty for insurers and close the insurance protection gap in hurricane-prone areas. The project draws on Ken Kennedy Institute research clusters on AI for urban resilience and computer vision.

Read more: https://news.rice.edu/news/2026/rice-researchers-use-nasa-ai-model-improve-hurricane-risk-estimates

10/07/2026

Join us for the Civil and Environmental Engineering Seminar Series featuring Dr. Jeffrey W. Bullard, Professor in the Zachry Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering and Materials Science & Engineering at Texas A&M University, presenting "The Most Expensive Brick in the Solar System."

A fired-clay brick costs about fifty cents, but delivered to the surface of the Moon, that same brick costs roughly two million dollars. As NASA plans a permanent presence at the lunar south pole, the first infrastructure it needs is civil infrastructure: landing pads, roads, berms, and shielding, all built from local regolith with almost no water and no supply chain. Dr. Bullard will treat the Moon as the extreme case of austere construction, making the case for sintering over cement, and will show how approaches like freeze casting and sodium silicate infiltration can produce near-net-shape parts with strength comparable to building brick.

📅 Thursday, October 8, 2026
⏰ 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM
📍 Ryon Engineering Building, Room 201, Rice University
https://events.rice.edu/event/442473-cee-seminar-dr-jeffrey-w-bullard-the-most

10/02/2026

👉 Interested in learning more about the Civil and Environmental Engineering Graduate Program at Rice? Whether your interests lie in sustainable infrastructure, hydrology, environmental biotechnology, climate resilience, or smart structures, join us for a candid, interactive 60-minute webinar.

You'll meet our faculty, current PhD candidates, and admissions staff, explore full funding packages and industry/academic career outcomes, and get direct answers to your questions during an open Q&A!

Space is limited, so please register: https://gradadmissions.rice.edu/register/?id=a56f65bb-513a-4054-ab1f-8e96f3143d0f.

The following faculty are actively recruiting for Fall 2027:
🔹 Daniel Cohan: Recruiting a student for the Cohan Research Group, which studies the interactions of air pollution, climate change, and energy.https://cohan.rice.edu/

🔹 Menachem Elimelech: Ph.D. student in Environmental Engineering. Elimelech Research Group focuses on advancing separation processes for water, energy, and sustainability, addressing critical global challenges through innovative solutions. Our work operates at the intersection of multiple disciplines, including nanotechnology, materials science, membrane science, and interfacial phenomena.https://elimelechlab.rice.edu/

🔹 Beza Getachew: The student will work on projects related to materials used in water treatment, such as membranes or adsorbents. Ideal candidates will have a master's or bachelor's degree in environmental, chemical, or civil engineering, with some research experience. Getachew Research Group focuses on understanding the performance of “smart materials” in the context of water treatment technologies and resilient water infrastructure. https://getachew.rice.edu/people

🔹 Avantika Gori: Student in the area of hurricane hazards. With the goal of improving the resilience of coastal communities, the Gori Research Group focuses on multi-hazard risk assessment under non-stationary climate and environmental conditions. https://gori.blogs.rice.edu/

🔹 Jamie Padgett: PhD student in the general area of structural fragility, multi-hazard risk, and resilience Padgett Research Group focuses on applying probabilistic methods to risk assessment of infrastructure, including subsequent quantification of resilience and sustainability.
https://padgett.rice.edu/

👉 Rice Graduate Admissions Deadlines:
Spring 2027: October 15
Fall 2027: December 15

For more information about applying:
https://graduate.rice.edu/admissions

09/25/2026

Rice Civil and Environmental Engineering continues to earn national recognition in the latest U.S. News & World Report undergraduate rankings.

🔹 Environmental Engineering: No. 17 in the nation and No. 7 among private universities
🔹 Civil Engineering: No. 33 in the nation and No. 10 among private universities

Our faculty and students continue to build momentum on real-world challenges in water, infrastructure and resilience. With Houston as a living laboratory, undergraduates work alongside researchers shaping how cities prepare for natural hazards and how we protect, treat and reuse water.

These results are part of a strong year for the Rice Engineering and Computing which rose four spots to No. 17 nationally for undergraduate engineering. https://news.rice.edu/news/2026/rice-rises-no-16-us-news-rankings-engineering-business-programs-climb

09/23/2026

Join the Rice Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering for a seminar with Dr. Hussein Nassar of the University of Houston, presenting "A Maxwell-Calladine Counting Rule for Thin Shells."

Dr. Nassar will explore how structures can change shape with little effort while staying stable, building on the classic count of the ways a truss can deform without stretching. Extending the idea to wrinkled membranes, corrugated plates and folded origami-like sheets, he will show how wrinkles, pleats and corrugations shape the stiffness of a thin plate, with applications from space structures to robotics, architecture and fashion.

📅 Thursday, September 24, 2026
⏰ 3:00 PM CDT
📍 Ryon Laboratory 201, Rice University
https://events.rice.edu/event/441230-cee-seminar-series-a-maxwell-calladine-counting

Address

6100 Main Street
West University Place, TX
77005

Opening Hours

Monday	8am - 5pm
Tuesday	8am - 5pm
Wednesday	8am - 5pm
Thursday	8am - 5pm
Friday	8am - 5pm

Website

https://cee.rice.edu/

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