Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering

Faculty Directory

Audra Morse, PE, BCEE, F.ASCE

Audra Morse, PE, BCEE, F.ASCE

  • Department Chair, Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering
  • Professor, Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering
  • Faculty Advisor, Built World Enterprise

Links of Interest  

Built World Enterprise

Research Interests

  • Water and Wastewater Treatment
  • Water reclamation systems and Fate of personal products in treatment systems
Theresa Ahlborn, PE

Theresa M. Ahlborn, PE

  • Professor, Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering
  • Director, Center for Structural Durability

Teaching Interests

  • Prestressed Concrete Bridges
  • Reinforced Concrete Design
  • Bridge Engineering - Design and Construction
  • Structural Analysis and Mechanics

Research Interests

  • Structural Engineering
  • Prestressed Concrete Bridges
  • Applications of UHPC for Buildings and Bridges
  • Nondestructive Evaluation and Testing
  • Remote Sensing for Bridge Condition Assessment
  • Bridge Inspection with Today’s Advancing Technologies
  • Anchorage and Development of Reinforcement
Lynn Artman, PE

Lynn A. Artman, PE

  • Professor of Practice, Construction Management
  • Program Chair, Construction Management

Research Interests

  • Risk Management
  • Construction Contracts and Law
  • Green building design—LEED
  • Lean construction
  • Energy efficiency

Teaching Interests

  • Construction contracts
  • Construction finance and accounting
  • Construction project management
  • Alternative delivery methods
  • Planning and scheduling
  • Estimating
Brian Barkdoll, PE

Brian D. Barkdoll, PE

  • Professor, Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering

Links of Interest

Research Interests

  • Dam Decommissioning
  • Environmental Engineering
  • Hydraulic Structures
  • River Mechanics
  • Sediment Transport
  • Stream Rehabilitation
  • Sustainability
Jennifer Becker

Jennifer Becker

  • Associate Professor, Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering
  • Affiliated Associate Professor, Biological Sciences

Links of Interest

Teaching Interests

  • Water and wastewater treatment
  • Biological treatment processes

Research Interests

  • Bioremediation of Contaminated Groundwater Environments
  • Microbial Ecology and Kinetics of Chlorinated Aliphatic Solvent Biodegradation
  • Conversion of Organic Solid Wastes and Cellulosic Feedstocks to Electricity via Microbial Fuel Cells
Qingli Dai

Qingli Dai

  • Professor, Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering

Links of Interest

Teaching Interests

  • Matrix structural analysis, Finite element analysis, Civil engineering materials and Computational transportation materials

Research Interests

  • Computational analysis for material research: multiscale modeling, finite element analysis, discrete element analysis, multiphysical modeling, fracture simulation and molecular dynamics
  • Self-healing and accelerated healing of asphalt mixtures, micromechanical modeling
  • Internal curing concrete, early-age properties and concrete durability
  • Self-healing construction materials, alternative and sustainable infrastructure materials
  • Active-material actuator design, wind-structure interaction, vibration reduction
  • Acoustic and ultrasonic measurement, advanced X-ray and neutron scattering characterization
Yousef Darestani

Yousef Darestani

  • Assistant Professor, Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering

Links of Interest

Teaching Interests

  • Structural Analysis
  • Structural Reliability

Research Interests

  • Risk and Reliability of Infrastructure Systems
  • Life Cycle Resilience Enhancement
  • Community Resilience Assessment
  • Machine Learning
  • Network Analysis
  • Wind Engineering
Daniel Dowden, PE, SE

Daniel M. Dowden, PE, SE

  • Assistant Professor, Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering

Teaching Interests

  • Earthquake engineering
  • Structural dynamics
  • Steel design
  • Reinforced concrete design
  • Structural analysis

Research Interests

  • Earthquake engineering
  • Self-centering systems
  • Resilient infrastructure
  • Structural control
  • Nonlinear response of steel structures due to extreme loadings
  • Experimental testing using static, pseudo-dynamic, and dynamic methods
Ricardo Eiris

Ricardo Eiris

  • Assistant Professor, Construction Management
  • Faculty, Civil and Environmental Engineering
  • Faculty, College of Business

Teaching Interests

  • Technology Applications in Construction
  • Building Information Modeling (BIM)
  • Construction Safety
  • Building Utilities (Mechanical, Electrical, and Plumbing) 

Research Interests

  • Human-Technology Interaction
  • Virtual and Augmented Reality
  • Building Information Modeling
  • Unmanned Aerial Systems/Vehicles (UASs/UAVs)
  • Cyberlearning 
Joseph Foster, PS, PLS

Joseph Foster, PS, PLS

  • Professor of Practice, Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering

Teaching Interests

  • Introduction to land surveying
  • Route and construction surveying
  • Survey field practice
  • Professional practice review
Jacob Hiller

Jacob Hiller

  • Associate Professor, Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering

Teaching Interests

  • Pavements
  • Construction Materials
  • Transportation-related topics

Research Interests

  • Pavement mechanics and the interaction between materials, analysis and performance
  • Sustainable transportation infrastructure
Jeffery Hollingsworth

Jeffery Pereira Hollingsworth

  • Professor of Practice, Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering

Research Interests

  • UAV Uses and Geomatics Applications
  • Spatial Data Adjustments
  • Multibeam/Single Beam Hydrographic Surveying and Bathymetric Surveys
  • Boundary Determinations and Legal Principles
  • Terrestrial LiDAR integration and GIS
Jae Sung Kim

Jae Sung Kim

  • Assistant Professor, Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering

Research Interests

  • Photogrammetry
  • Remote Sensing
  • GIS
  • Geospatial Cyberinfrastructure
  • Application of geospatial technology to agriculture and environmental science
Pasi Lautala, PE

Pasi Lautala, PE

  • Associate Professor, Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering
  • Director, Rail Transportation Program, Michigan Tech Transportation Institute

Links of Interest

Zhen Liu, PE

Zhen Liu, PE

  • Associate Professor, Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering
  • Affiliated Associate Professor, Geological and Mining Engineering and Sciences

Links of Interest

Teaching Interests

  • Soil mechanics and labs
  • Foundation engineering
  • Numerical simulations (FEM, FDM)
  • Multiphysics
  • Artificial intelligence
  • Data analytics in engineering

Research Interests

  • Intelligent infrastructure systems enabled by computing (AI, hybrid computing), sensing (acoustic, electromagnetic), and control (distributed systems with microcontrollers) for smart cities and safer, more (energy) efficient, and more resilient built environments
  • Enhancing system resilience with artificial intelligence (deep and reinforcement learning), physics (multiphysics and inverse analysis), and advanced data analytics (with transportation, meteorological, and GIS data)
  • Multiphysics and applications: thermohydromechanics (seasonal and climatic effects, material/environment processes, energy from gas hydrates), buoyance-driven flow (surface water geothermal), electromagnetics (sensing and sensors, energy harvesting), and soil-structure-fluid interaction (erosion and infrastructure protection)
  • Advanced soil mechanics and numerical simulation techniques: stress formulation, soil wetting, adsorption, non-isothermal soil mechanics, phase change, and soil behavior under extreme conditions; FEM, FDM, FVM, XFEM, molecular dynamics, SPH, Monte Carlo, and self-made methods.
Kris Mattila, PE

Kris G. Mattila, PE

  • Associate Professor, Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering
  • Affiliated Professor, Construction Management

Links of Interest

Daisuke Minakata

Daisuke Minakata

  • Associate Professor, Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering
  • Affiliated Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry
  • Affiliated Associate Professor, Department of Physics

Links of Interest

Teaching Interests

  • Physical-Chemical Treatment Processes
  • Environmental Process and Design
  • Computational Environmental Engineering and Chemistry

Research Interests

  • Sustainable water and wastewater treatment and management
  • Development of assessing and predicting tools for water treatment technologies
  • Innovative water and wastewater treatment technologies for energy saving and harvesting
  • Systematic and integrated understanding of water and wastewater reuse
  • Application of computational chemistry and molecular modeling
Amlan Mukherjee, PE

Amlan Mukherjee, PE

  • Professor, Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering

Links of Interest

Research Interests

  • Planning and decision making in infrastructure system management
  • Develop models and implements simulations that can aid decision makers assess design alternatives and explore what-if scenarios
Judith Perlinger

Judith A. Perlinger

  • Professor, Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering

Links of Interest

Teaching Interests

  • Environmental Engineering
  • Transport & Transformation of Organic Chemicals
  • Boundary Layer Meteorology
  • Sustainability

Research Interests

  • Air and Water Quality
  • Atmosphere-biosphere Exchange of Chemicals
  • Micrometeorology
  • Environmental Analytical Chemistry
  • Sustainability
Mohammad Sadeghi

Mohammad Sadeghi

  • Assistant Professor, Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering

Links of Interest

Courses Taught

  • Soil mechanics and foundation design
  • Advanced soil mechanics
  • Applied Machine Learning
  • Mechanics of materials

Research Interests

  • Soil and rock mechanics
  • Ground improvement and foundation design
  • Bio inspired Geotechnics/Foundations
  • Geomaterial behavior and testing
  • Artificial intelligence and machine learning in geotechnical engineering
  • Measurement While Drilling (MWD) in geotechnical engineering
  • Slope stability and debris flow hazards
  • Stability of underground structures
  • Mine tailings and abandoned mines geohazards and remediation
  • Intellectual, numerical and analytical modeling
Eric Seagren, PE

Eric Seagren, PE

  • Professor, Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering
  • Affiliated Professor, Biological Sciences

Links of Interest

Research Interests

  • Environmental biotechnology, including in situ bioremediation of contaminated subsurface environments, monitoring and evaluation of the performance of biological treatment processes, development of in situ biological treatment systems for urban storm water runoff, innovative reuse of waste materials, and in situ improvement of soils properties via microbially-mediated processes.
R. Swartz, PE

R. Andrew Swartz, PE

  • Associate Professor, Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering
  • Affiliated Associate Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Research Interests

  • Application computationally efficient and robust embedded algorithms for monitoring and protection of civil infrastructure assets such as buildings, bridges, pipelines, wind turbines, roadways, and railroads.
Noel Urban

Noel R. Urban

  • Professor, Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering

Links of Interest

Research Interests

  • Environmental cycles of major and trace elements
  • Sediment diagenesis and stratigraphy
  • Chemistry of natural organic matter
  • Wetland biogeochemistry
  • Environmental impact and fate of pollutants
  • Influence of organisms on the chemical environment
  • Role of chemical environment in controlling populations
Norma Veurink

Norma Veurink

  • Teaching Professor, Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering
David Watkins, PE

David Watkins, PE

  • Distinguished Professor, Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering

Links of Interest

Teaching Interests

  • Water resources planning and management
  • Environmental systems analysis
  • Hydrologic and hydraulic engineering
  • Optimization methods
  • Learning through service

Research Interests

  • Integrated water resources planning
  • Hydrologic modeling and forecasting
  • Flood risk management
  • Climate change mitigation and adaptation planning
  • Food-Energy-Water Nexus
  • Systems optimization under uncertainty
  • Sustainable development engineering
Melanie Watkins, PE

Melanie Kueber Watkins, PE

  • Research Assistant Professor, Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering

Links of Interest

Teaching Interests

  • River and Floodplain Hydraulics
  • Water Resources Modeling & Design
  • Water/wastewater/storm systems design
  • Senior Design
  • International Senior Design
  • Statics

Research Interests

  • 1D & 2D water modeling using 3D surfaces 
  • Flood inundation mapping
  • Modeling using large lidar and digital bathymetry datasets
  • Water management structure design for highways, industrial developments: culverts, bridge openings, storm sewers, in-line detention/ponds, floodway/floodplain mitigation
  • Sanitary sewer force main rehabilitation rehab research & design including pump station evaluations
Veronica Webster, PE

Veronica L. Webster, PE

  • Associate Professor, Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering

Links of Interest

Teaching Interests

  • Probability and statistics
  • Stochastic hydrology
  • Numerical methods
  • Water resources
  • Risk analysis and management

Research Interests

  • Water resources
  • Uncertainty analysis
  • Flood frequency and analysis of extreme events
  • Impacts of climate and land use changes
Shiliang Wu

Shiliang Wu

  • Professor, Geological and Mining Engineering and Sciences
  • Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering

Links of Interest

Research Interests

  • Interactions among climate, atmospheric chemistry, air quality, and land use/land cover
  • Impacts of global change on atmospheric chemistry and long-range transport of air pollution
  • Anthropogenic perturbations to the atmosphere and implications for environmental sustainability
  • Atmosphere-biosphere interactions, especially in the context of global change
  • Impacts of aerosols on the global hydrological cycle
Pengfei Xue

Pengfei Xue

  • Associate Professor, Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering
  • Director, Numerical Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Great Lakes Research Center

Links of Interest

Teaching Interests

  • Introductory Geophysical Fluid Dynamics
  • Hydrodynamic Modeling
  • Water Resources Engineering
  • Ecosystem Dynamics Modeling

Research Interests

  • Hydrodynamic modeling
  • Regional climate modeling
  • Coupled ocean-atmosphere dynamics
  • Data assimilation and machine learning
  • Biophysical processes in the Great Lakes
  • Estuary and coastal ocean processes
Xinyu Ye

Xinyu Ye

  • Research Assistant Professor, Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering

Research Interests

  • Hydrodynamic Models in the Great Lakes
  • Regional-scale Climate Modeling
Zhanping You, PE

Zhanping You, PE

  • Distinguished Professor, Transportation Engineering

Links of Interest

Teaching Interests

  • Road design and analysis
  • Civil engineering materials
  • Sustainable pavement engineering
  • Advanced asphalt materials
  • Pavement mechanics

Research Interests

  • Design, construction, and maintenance of pavements

  • Micromechanics for road materials

  • Discrete element modeling and finite element modeling techniques

  • Construction materials: asphalt, aggregate, asphalt concrete

  • Alternative materials for civil engineering

  • Recycled materials for civil engineering
Kuilin Zhang

Kuilin Zhang

  • Associate Professor, Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering
  • Affiliated Associate Professor, Computer Science

Links of Interest

Teaching Interests

  • Transportation Network Analysis
  • Traffic Flow Theory
  • Travel Demand Analysis
  • Transportation Systems Operations and Control
  • Transportation Planning
  • Traffic Engineering
  • Optimization Methods

Research Interests

  • Data-driven optimization and control models for connected and automated vehicles (CAVs)
  • Big traffic data analytics using machine learning
  • Mobile and crowd sensing of dynamic traffic systems
  • Dynamic network equilibrium and optimization
  • Modeling and simulation of large-scale complex systems
  • Freight logistics and supply chain systems
  • Impact of plug-in electric vehicles to smart grid and transportation network systems
  • Interdependency and resiliency of large-scale networked infrastructure systems
  • Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs)
  • Smart Cities
  • Cyber-Physical Systems