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M.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering

Civil engineers innovate, create, and design buildings, bridges, dams, and complex systems like transportation and water networks. They develop wastewater treatment systems and hazardous waste remediation projects to protect the environment, and even design structures for entertainment events.

Format

In-Person

Page Contents

Note: This page provides a general overview. For complete and accurate information, please consult with your advisor. For current course offerings and information, refer to the Cornell University Registrar: Courses of Study.

Program Overview

A research-oriented degree program usually completed within four semesters; it requires an independently written thesis and concomitant Masters thesis defense (M-Exam). Each student’s program (course work and research) is individualized and decided upon in consultation with a Special Committee which the student selects and that is made up of faculty from the student’s major and minor subject areas.

The program is intended for those interested in a research or academic career and, generally, continuation into a Ph.D. program.

Degree Requirements

Civil and Environmental Engineering M.S. students must meet a combination of Graduate School milestones and field specific requirements to be positioned to earn the M.S. degree. As the M.S. degree is a research degree that culminates in a dissertation, the student’s program will be greatly informed by the thesis research project as well as by the committee chair, special committee, and the concentration.

Per the Graduate School’s Code of Legislation, M.S. students must complete a minimum of two enrolled semesters. One of those semesters must be in residence on the Ithaca New York Campus. Civil and Environmental Engineering M.S. students are strongly encouraged to take at least 12 graded graduate level courses related to their dissertation project. Civil and Environmental Engineering Ph.D. students are required to take the Qualifying Exam (Q-Exam), Admission to Candidacy Exam (A-Exam) and Final Defense of the Dissertation (B-Exam).

Courses

Civil and Environmental Engineering research degree students must take CEE 5025 Civil and Environmental Engineering Seminar for First-Year Research Students. Specific core coursework is outlined by the student’s concentration and their special committee. Civil and Environmental Engineering M.S. students are encouraged to complete at least 12 graded graduate level courses related to their thesis project.

Visit the Concentrations section for more information.

Concentrations

  • Environmental Fluid Mechanics and Hydrology

    Environmental Fluid Mechanics and Hydrology involves the study of fluid mechanics of the environment and the associated application to hydraulics, hydrology, coastal oceanography, and meteorology as related to the wet earth and atmosphere.

    Research in this area includes: air-sea interaction; hydrodynamics and sediment transport; wave-structure interactions; numerical modeling of tsunami generation; remote sensing techniques for sea states; water properties and seafloor characterization.

  • Environmental Processes

    Environmental Processes is concerned with the protection and management of the quality of the environment for the benefit of society.

    The field emphasizes biological, chemical, and physical phenomena and engineering principles; laboratory and computational skills; and their application to the analysis of relevant problems.

    The field focuses on advancing fundamental knowledge and developing sustainable technologies that can contribute to the paradigm shifts needed to face the most urgent environmental challenges facing human societies.

  • Environmental and Water Resource Engineering

    Environmental and Water Resources Systems Engineering addresses the development and application of scientific principles, economic theory, and mathematical techniques to the management and planning of public infrastructure and environmental and water resource systems.

    Research in this field include evaluation of engineering projects, contaminant modeling and remediation optimization, statistical analysis of hydrologic processes, water supply systems management, risk analysis, ecological systems management, sustainable development and computer graphics-oriented decision support systems.

  • Structural Engineering

    Structural Engineering concentrates its considerable expertise in materials, computational and probabilistic mechanics, structural health monitoring, and high performance computing to model, analyze, simulate, and design complex systems that are characterized by multi-physics processes that transcend several time and length scales.

    The group also seeks to establish a reciprocal relationship between experimentation and computing by utilizing physical experiments to observe behavior phenomena, to measure properties and mechanisms, and to validate computational models.

  • Transportation Systems Engineering

    Transportation Systems Engineering embraces policy, planning, design, and evaluation of transport systems and the relationships among transport supply and demand, land use, and regional development. The approach is multimodal and systems oriented; it emphasizes the use of quantitative and analytical techniques of operations research and economics.

    Research in the field consists of automated traveler information systems, freight transportation and security concerns, transportation of hazardous materials, and air quality issues in urban transportation.

Field Exams (Research Students)

M.S. students take one exam, the Masters Thesis Defense (M-Exam), in order to be awarded their M.S. degree. This exam is required by the Graduate School and is an oral defense of their thesis. Per the Graduate School’s Code of Legislation, Graduate Faculty require research master’s students writing a thesis to take a final examination upon completion of all degree requirements, no earlier than one month before completion of the minimum registration requirement.

The M exam schedule must be submitted to the Graduate School a minimum of ten days in advance of the exam (see Cornell Graduate School: Forms). The exam must be announced to the Civil and Environmental Engineering Community. Please send your picture, title and abstract to the Graduate Field Coordinator once the exam is scheduled. The Results of the Examination (see Cornell Graduate School: Forms ) must be submitted to the Graduate School within three business days following the exam.

The M Exam is conducted by the Special Committee. For a student to pass the exam, all members of the special committee must approve. The result of an examination, whether pass or fail, must be reported promptly to both the Graduate School and the Director of Graduate Studies of the field within three business days after the date of the exam.

Special Commitee

Per the Graduate School’s Code of Legislation, Graduate Faculty require M.S. students to have identified a Special Committee Chair or a temporary advisor no later than three weeks after the first registration in the Graduate School (submitted to the Graduate School via Student Center). Per the Graduate School’s Code of Legislation, the Graduate Faculty requires M.S. students to have a full Special Committee no later than the end of the second semester.

Each candidate selects a Special Committee that guides and judges the student’s progress in graduate study. M.S. candidates select a Special Committee Chairman from the major subject area and a member from a minor subject area that is demonstrated to be distinctly different (in terms of research scope and course requirements) from the student’s major subject area and sometimes add a third member representing a second minor or for special thesis supervision. Some concentrations assign provisional advisors at the time of matriculation (i.e.: Transportation) while others have a meeting of the concentration faculty to discuss how students will be assigned with mentors (i.e.: Environmental Processes).

Concentration: Environmental Fluid Mechanics and Hydrology

Course requirements are selected and approved by each student’s advisor and special committee. A list of recommended core courses is provided to all incoming students. Typical advisor approved electives will depend on availability in each given semester.

Environmental Fluid Mechanics and Hydrology Core Courses (Recommended)

  • MAE 6010

    Fluid Mechanics

  • MAE 6310

    Turbulence

  • CEE 6550

    Transport and Mixing in the Environment

  • CEE 6000

    Advanced Numerical Methods for Engineers

  • CEE 6330

    Physical hydrology in the Built and Natural Environments

  • CEE 6370

    Experimental Fluid Mechanics

Environmental Fluid Mechanics and Hydrology Electives

  • CEE 6300

    Spectral Methods for Incompressible Environmental Flows

  • CEE 6305

    Special Topics in Hydraulics and Hydrology: Boundary Layer Meteorology and Urban Climates

  • CEE 6360

    Environmental Fluid Mechanics

  • CEE 7360

    Turbulence and Mixing in Environmental Stratified Flows

Concentration: Environmental Processes

The Environmental Processes faculty recommends that students select a majority of courses from among the following core courses and elective courses. The core courses are typically offered every academic year and the elective courses are offered less frequently.

Environmental Processes Core Courses

  • CEE 6420

    Energy Technologies and Subsurface Resources

  • CEE 6560

    Physical/Chemical Processes

  • CEE 6530

    Water Chemistry

  • CEE 6565

    Waste Water Processes and Resources Recovery

  • CEE 6570

    Biological Processes

  • CEE 5510

    Microbiology for Environmental Engineering

Environmental Processes Electives

  • CEE 6005-105

    Noise in Biology & Environmental Sciences

  • CEE 6XXX

    Stochastic Modeling of Complex Systems

  • CEE 6580

    Biodegradation and Biocatalysis

  • CEE 6585

    Biogeochemical Reaction Modeling

  • CEE 6590

    Environmental Organic Chemistry

Environmental Processes Other Relevant Courses

  • BEE 6310

    Multivariate Statistics for Environmental Applications

  • CEE 6320

    Hydrology

  • CEE 6970

    Risk Analysis and Management

Concentration: Environmental and Water Resource Engineering

Research and courses within the Environmental and Water Resources Systems group are concerned with the development and application of quantitative methods for the evaluation, planning and operation of water resource and environmental systems. Efforts address the integration and analysis of engineering and economic-policy issues posed by the need to manage water, land, air and human resources, as well as environmental remediation efforts. The fundamental sciences upon which such analyses are based include hydrology, hydraulics, environmental sciences, biology, and environmental engineering.

Environmental and Water Resource Engineering Electives

  • CEE 5200

    Economics of the Energy Transition

  • CEE 5240

    Model Based Systems Engineering

  • CEE 5252

    Systems Analysis Behavior and Optimization

  • CEE 5735 / 6736

    Mathematical Modeling of Natural and Engineered Systems

  • CEE 5745

    Inverse Problems: Theory and Applications

  • CEE 5795

    Sensors for the Built and Natural Environments

  • CEE 5820

    Global Food, Energy, and Water Nexus

  • CEE 5930

    Data Analytics

  • CEE 5970

    Risk Analysis and Management

  • CEE 5980

    Decision Framing and Analytics

  • CEE 6000

    Advanced Numerical Methods for Engineers

  • CEE 6100

    Remote Sensing Fundamentals

  • CEE 6XXX

    Stochastic Modeling of Complex Systems

  • CEE 6200

    Water-Resources Systems Engineering

  • CEE 6330

    Physical Hydrology in the Built and Natural Environment

  • CEE 6550

    Transport and Mixing in the Environment

  • CEE 6665

    Modeling and Optimization for Smart Infrastructure Systems

  • CEE 6660

    Multiobjective Systems Engineering Under Uncertainty

  • CEE 6770

    Natural Hazards, Reliability, and Insurance

  • CEE 6790

    Time Series Data Analysis for Civil, Mechanical and Geophysical Applications

  • CEE 6800

    Engineering Smart Cities

  • CEE 6880

    Applied Modeling and Simulation for Renewable Systems

  • CEE 6930

    Public Systems Modeling

  • BEE 6110

    Hydrologic Engineering in a Changing Climate

  • BEE 6310

    Multivariate Statistics for Environmental Applications

  • SYSEN 6000

    Foundations of Complex Systems

  • SYSEN 5888

    Deep Learning

  • ORIE 5300

    Optimization I

  • ORIE 5310

    Optimization II

  • ORIE 5510

    Introduction to Stochastic Processes

  • CS 5780

    Introduction to Machine Learning

  • CS 5786

    Machine Learning for Data Science

  • CS 5789

    Introduction to Reinforcement Learning

Note: This list is not meant to preclude additional electives that can be approved by a student’s graduate advisor or committee member in Environmental and Water Resource Engineering.

Concentration: Structural Engineering

Course requirements are selected and approved by each student’s advisor and special committee. Typical advisor approved electives will depend on availability in each given semester

Structural Engineering Electives (Fall)

  • CEE 5735 / CEE 6736

    Mathematical Modeling of Natural & Engineered Systems

  • CEE 5950

    Construction Planning and Operations

  • CEE 6000

    Numerical Methods for Engineers

  • CEE 6720

    Introduction to Finite Element Method

  • CEE 6730

    Design of Concrete Structures

  • CEE 6770

    Natural Hazards, Reliability, and Insurance

  • CEE 6790

    Time Series Data Analysis

  • CEE 7710

    Stochastic Problems Engineering and Science

  • MAE 5700

    Finite Element Analysis for Mechanical and Aerospace Design

  • MAE 6110

    Foundations of Solid Mechanics

  • MAE 6010

    Foundations of Fluid Mechanics

  • MAE 6130

    Mechanics of Composite Structures

  • MAE 6730

    Intermediate Dynamics and Vibrations

  • MAE 5010

    Future Energy Systems

  • MAE 6810

    Methods of Applied Mathematics

  • ICS 6210

    Numerical Analysis and Differential Equations

Structural Engineering Electives (Spring)

  • BME 5810

    Soft Tissue Biomechanics

  • CEE 5745 / CEE 6745

    Inverse Problems: Theory and Applications

  • CEE 5795

    Sensors for the Built and Natural Environments

  • CEE 6725

    3D Printing Parts that Don’t Break

  • CEE 6750

    Concrete Materials and Construction

  • CEE 6780

    Structural Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering

  • CEE 7740

    Advanced Structural Concrete

  • CS 6220

    Introduction to Scientific Computation

  • MAE 5130

    Mechanical Properties of Thin Films

  • MAE 5790

    Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos

  • MAE 6120

    Foundations of Solid Mechanics II

  • MAE 6160

    Advanced Composite Materials

  • MAE 6640

    Mechanics of Bone

  • MAE 6780

    Methods of Applied Mathematics

  • IIMSE 6020

    Elasticity, Plasticity, and Fracture

  • TAM 6680

    Elastic Waves in Solids with Applications

Concentration: Transportation Systems Engineering

Transportation Systems Engineering Core Courses (required)

  • CEE 6620

    Analysis and Control of Transportation Systems and Networks

  • CEE 6640

    Microeconometrics of Discrete Choice

Transportation Systems Engineering Core Courses (recommended)

  • CEE 6648

    Sustainable Transportation Systems Design

  • CEE 5930

    Data Analytics

Transportation Systems Engineering Elective Courses

  • CRP 5040

    Urban Economics

  • CRP 5080

    Intro to Geographic Information Systems

  • CRP 5170

    Economic Development

  • CRP 5190

    Urban Theory and Spatial Development

  • CRP 5520

    Land Use Planning

  • CRP 5840

    Green Cities

  • CRP 6090

    Urban and Regional Theory

  • CRP 6860

    Planning for Sustainable Transportation

  • CEE 5290

    Heuristic Methods for Optimization

  • CEE 5900

    Project Management

  • CEE 5970

    Risk Analysis and Management

  • CEE 6620

    Analysis and Control of Transportation Systems and Networks

  • CEE 6640

    Microeconometrics of Discrete Choice

  • CEE 6665

    Modeling and Optimization for Smart Infrastructure Systems

  • CEE 6930

    Public Systems Modeling

  • ECON 5540

    Economics of Regulation

  • ECON 6090

    Microeconomic Theory

  • AEM 6170

    Decision Models for Small & Large Businesses

  • AEM 6320

    Public Private Sector Economics Linkages

  • AEM 6330

    Devolution, Privatization, & the New Public Management

  • ORIE 5300

    Optimization I

  • ORIE 5310

    Optimization II

  • ORIE 5510

    Introduction to Stochastic Processes

  • ORIE 6580

    Simulation Modeling and Analysis

  • NBA 6410

    Supply Chain Management