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Rice University Civil and Environmental Engineering

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Rice University Civil and Environmental Engineering

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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.

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

09/21/2026

Katlyn Schmeltzer '25 started at Rice as a chemistry major, but she wanted a path into engineering. The Master of Civil and Environmental Engineering (MCEE) program became the bridge.

Today, she is an environmental engineer at GSI Environmental, sampling groundwater in the field, supporting environmental cases and running research that recently took her from Texas all the way to the Canadian border.

Read how the MCEE helped Katlyn launch her environmental engineering career: https://cee.rice.edu/news/how-master-civil-and-environmental-engineering-prepared-chemistry-major-career-environmental

09/10/2026

It has been a remarkable year for CEE graduate student Hossein Gazmeh, who has earned multiple honors recognizing both his research and his mentorship.

Hossein received the Outstanding Research Mentor Award from the Rice Office of Undergraduate Research and Inquiry, earned a Graduate Research Fellowship from the Center for Computational Insights on Inequality and Society at Rice (CIISR) for the 2026-2027 cohort, joined the FY26 cohort of Rice Chevron Energy Graduate Fellows through the Rice Sustainability Institute, and received a 2025 ASHE Houston Graduate Scholarship.

A member of Professor Xinwu Qian's MOBIX Lab, Hossein studies how infrastructure and the urban ecosystem around it, from neighborhood structure to mobility patterns to business dynamics, shape one another, and how understanding those mechanisms can help cities plan for future disruptions.

Let's all congratulate Hossein on these fantastic achievements!
https://ouri.rice.edu/people/hossein-gazmeh

09/08/2026

🗣️ Join us as we kick off our Fall 2026 CEE Seminar Series featuring Dr. Auroop Ganguly, College of Engineering Distinguished Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northeastern University, in his talk "From a Convergence of Complexities to Converging across Complexities."

Dr. Ganguly will discuss adaptation to global change as a societal need requiring solutions at the interfaces of complex natural, human-engineered, and social systems. The talk will provide an overview of work in physics-integrated data sciences and machine learning for adapting to evolving sustainability and security challenges, concluding with a discussion on learning extremes and emergence across complex dynamical systems with new generation Artificial Intelligence methods.

📅 Thursday, September 10, 2026
⏰ 3:00 PM
📍 Ryon Laboratory 201, Rice University
https://events.rice.edu/event/439860-fall-2026-cee-seminar-series

09/03/2026

History in the making at Rice University Civil and Environmental Engineering

Bryan Mendoza has become the first-ever graduate of Rice University's new Bachelor of Science in Environmental Engineering (BSENVE) program, launched in 2024 as the only environmental-focused degree at Rice offering a direct path to a Professional Engineering license.

Growing up in an East Houston fence-line community near oil refineries and chemical facilities, Bryan transformed the environmental challenges he witnessed into a mission to build more just and sustainable energy systems. At Rice, he earned three minors, led Rice Wind Energy, and guided the team to a second-place finish at the Department of Energy Collegiate Wind Competition. This fall, he heads to the Doerr School of Sustainability at Stanford University for a master's in civil and environmental engineering.

Jorge Loyo, director of the Energy and Water Sustainability Minor, celebrated both the early arrival of this milestone and Bryan's outstanding performance throughout the program.

Please join us in congratulating Bryan on this milestone and wishing him well as he heads to Stanford. Read more: https://engineering.rice.edu/news/fenceline-frontline-meet-rices-first-environmental-engineering-graduate

09/02/2026

🏆 Congratulations to Ph.D. candidate Andres Calvo, who took home a best poster award at the CERCat (Consortium for Enhancing Resilience and Catastrophe Modeling) semi-annual meeting at Lehigh University!

Chosen from 17 presentations, Andres was recognized for his research on how low-rise buildings hold up against hail and high winds at the same time. Mentored by department chair Jamie Padgett, he's building models to help insurers, city planners and engineers better predict and reduce storm damage to homes and buildings.

Way to go, Andres! 👏
Read more: https://engineering.rice.edu/news/rice-doctoral-student-earns-best-poster-award-cercat-semi-annual-meeting

08/27/2026

🎓 Advance Your Career with Rice University's Master of Civil & Environmental Engineering (MCEE). A degree program designed to enhance the skills necessary to tackle the complex infrastructure and environmental challenges of today.

Join us for a virtual information session and learn how Rice's MCEE program can help you deepen your expertise.

📅 Upcoming Virtual Info Sessions:
• September 24 · 12:00 – 1:00 PM
• October 22 · 4:00 – 5:00 PM
• November 19 · 12:00 – 1:00 PM

🔗 Register now: https://epmp.rice.edu/info-sessions

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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