Civil & Environmental Engineering (Graduate Program)

For information regarding the UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAM, click here.   

Program Overview

The first graduate degree at LSU was a master’s degree in civil engineering awarded in 1869. Today, the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering’s graduate program is characterized by its work in the areas of coastal engineering, environmental engineering, and infrastructure engineering. Graduate and research programs are organized within this framework into six focus areas: environmental engineering, geotechnical engineering, structural engineering, mechanics of materials, transportation engineering, and water resources/coastal engineering. All areas have excellent research facilities and equipment to conduct fundamental and applied research. Projects of local, regional, national and international importance are underway. In the last five years, graduate student enrollment has ranged from 110-130.

Administration

Admission

Applications and supporting materials for all graduate study must be submitted through the online application site of the LSU Graduate School. Official transcripts, official test scores, and other materials that come from third-party sources must be mailed directly to: LSU Office of Graduate Admissions, 114 West David Boyd Hall, Baton Rouge, LA 70803. These paper documents are stored electronically and departments have access to all materials submitted by and/or on behalf of a student applying to graduate study.

Applicants must adhere to the application deadlines established by the Graduate School (https://www.lsu.edu/graduateschool). Once an application is complete, it will be evaluated by the department.  Typically spring and fall applications are encouraged, while applications for the summer term are deprecated. International students are strongly encouraged to apply earlier than established deadlines to allow sufficient time for application review and processing of I-20 paperwork.

The LSU Graduate School requires that students submit directly to its office the following items: official transcripts (along with an English translation version for non-English documents) from each and every institution of higher education attended, official GRE scores (sent directly from ETS to the LSU Graduate School (code 6373)), and international students whose native language is not English must also submit an official TOEFL, IELTS, or PTE score.

In addition to the documents and scores required by the LSU Graduate School, the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering requires applicants to submit the following items: three letters of recommendation (no form required), and a statement of purpose. Also, applicants are encouraged (but not required) to submit a resumé. A writing sample is not required by our department; however, an applicant may choose to submit one if they believe it will strengthen their application.  All of these additional items should be submitted electronically through the Graduate School’s admission system. Direct mailing of these items is discouraged.

Please note that meeting the minimum admission requirements established by the Graduate School does not necessarily guarantee acceptance into the department’s graduate program. The departmental faculty reviews each applicant’s record to assess potential success at the graduate level, taking into consideration GRE scores, undergraduate and graduate preparation and grade-point averages (GPA), letters of recommendation, TOEFL, IELTS, or PTE scores (international applicants whose native language is not English), and any other supplementary information provided by the applicant. When all admission requirements are met, the faculty may recommend regular admission. If an applicant does not meet all requirements, he or she may be admitted provisionally. Applicants must have GRE score of 300 minimum (1100 on the old GRE scoring scale) for regular admission and 294 minimum (1000 on the old GRE scoring scale) for probationary admission to our graduate program. For the TOEFL, applicants must have a score of at least 550 on the paper-based test, a 213 on the computer-based test, or a 79 on the Internet-based test, or an IELTS score of 6.5, or a PTE score of at least 59; a TOEFL or IELTS score equivalent to 575 is required to be eligible for financial assistance.

Financial Assistance

Financial assistance is available to selected students. For the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering Graduate Program, financial assistance is primarily available in the form of graduate research or teaching assistantships. Amounts of stipends for research and teaching assistants vary from year to year, and awardees are determined during the admission review process. Thus, it is important that all application materials be submitted in accordance with the LSU Graduate School and department deadlines. Assistantships at LSU are competitive with those of other large state universities. Many assistantships qualify the student for waiver of all in-state and out-of-state fees except for university fees. Students seeking financial support are encouraged to communicate with a faculty with whom they are interested in doing research and mention the name of that faculty on their statement of purpose.

Graduate Faculty

(check current faculty listings by department here)

Ahmed Abdalla (3F) • Big data analysis, Surveying, Geodesy, Geoinformatics, Mapping and Positioning
Murad Yusuf Abu-Farsakh (3F) • Geosynthetic reinforcement of soils, subgrades, and base materials; Advanced in situ testing to evaluate soil properties; Numerical modeling of geotechnical and pavement engineering problems; Analysis, design, instrumentation, testing and LRFD calibration of deep foundations
Donald Dean Adrian (EM) • Hydrology, mathematical modeling, wetlands, groundwater resources, environmental engineering
Aly Moussad Aly (M) • Experimental/Computational multiscale/multiphysics assessment and mitigation of wind, rain, and wave impacts on infrastructure (buildings, bridges, wind turbines, solar panels, petrochemical structures, offshore structures, etc.), Bluff Body Aerodynamics, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), Structural Control, Structural Dynamics.
Chunsheng Cai (EM) • Bridge engineering, prestressed concrete, wind engineering, structural dynamics, structural performance evaluation and rehabilitation
Shengli Chen (M) • Theoretical and computational geomechanics, pile foundation and soil structure interaction, poromechanics and constitutive modeling of geomaterials, hydraulic fracturing
Chunli Dai (6A) • Big data analysis, landslide detection from satellite photogrammetric data, coseismic deformation analysis using satellite gravimetry, volcanic eruptions monitoring using satellite geodesy
Zhi-Qiang Deng (M) • Environmental fluid mechanics, environmental hydrology, river engineering
Mostafa A. Elseifi (M) • Pavement modeling and design, field and laboratory characterization of asphalt mixtures
Vijaya K. Gopu (EM) • Structural engineering and structural mechanics
Hany Hassan (6A) • Transportation Safety, Smart/Intelligent Transportation Systems, Emerging Technologies in Transportation Engineering, Human factors and drivers’ behaviors, Traffic Operation and Simulation, Statistical Applications in Transportation Engineering
Navid H Jafari (M) • Soil mechanics and behavior, coastal and riverine protection infrastructure, erosion control, coastal restoration, subsidence, earth and man-made embankment stability, transient and unsaturated fluid flow, waste containment systems, geosynthetics, transportation and environmental geotechnics
Sabarethinam Kameshwar (6A) • Infrastructure and community resilience; multi-hazard and extreme event performance of structures and infrastructure systems; surrogate modeling and machine learning for natural hazards research; decision support for resilience considering deep uncertainties; lifecycle analysis and sustainability of infrastructure.
Christopher Kees (M) • Fluid-Structure Interaction, Multiphase Fluid Dynamics, Sediment Dynamics, Water Waves, Coastal and Riverine Processes
Hai Thomas Lin (6A) • Bio-Geotechnical Engineering, Soil-Structure Interaction, Geophysics
Ronald F. Malone (EM) • Recirculating aquaculture, eutrophication, water quality modeling, wastewater treatment
John B. Metcalf (EM) • Accelerated pavement testing, low-cost roads, non-standard materials, pavement design and quality control
William M. Moe (M) • Environmental Engineering, biological waste treatment, biofilm processes, sequencing batch reactors, bioremediation, Air pollution control
Louay N. Mohammad (M) • Fundamental characterization of transportation materials, flexible pavement design and analysis, pavement instrumentation, computational and experimental mechanics
Ayman M. Okeil (M) • Bridge engineering, structural reliability, behavior of concrete structures, structural strengthening using composite materials, earthquake engineering                                                    
Celalettin Ozdemir (6A) • Coastal and fluvial sediment transport, multiphase flow modeling, environmental fluid mechanics, turbulent and transitional flows
John H. Pardue (M) • Biological remediation, wetlands, environmental chemistry, fate and transport of contaminants, environmental engineering
Roger K. Seals (EM) • Geotechnical engineering, use and recycling of industrial by-product materials
Vijay P. Singh (EM) • Surface and subsurface hydrology, stochastic and mathematical modeling, irrigation hydraulics, entropy
Samuel David Snow (6A) • Environmental photochemistry, photodegradation of PAHs, light-mediated disinfection technologies, pathogen inactivation mechanisms, adsorption interactions in aqueous systems, and multi-functional adsorbent-photocatalytic materials
Chao Sun (M) • Structural dynamics and vibration control, hydrodynamics, fluid structure interaction, coupled dynamics of offshore floating wind turbines, multi-hazard mitigation for coastal and offshore structures, damage diagnosis and prognosis, energy harvesting
Frank Tsung-Chen Tsai (M) • Groundwater hydrology/hydraulics, contaminant fate and transport in subsurface, inverse problems, aquifer heterogeneity characterization, geostatistics, water resources systems management
Mehmet T. Tumay (EM) • Geotechnical engineering, in situ testing, soil reinforcement and improvement
George Z. Voyiadjis (M) • Multiscale modeling and simulation of material behavior and structures, microstructural characterization of materials, nanomechanics, inelastic behavior of materials, damage mechanics, dynamic failure of materials, computational mechanics, composite materials, thin films and MEMS, refined theory of plate and shells
Clinton S. Willson (M) • Environmental fluid mechanics, Physical and numerical modeling of river hydrodynamics and sediment transport, high-resolution X-ray CT, multiphase flow in porous media
Chester G. Wilmot (EM) • Emergency evacuation travel demand estimation, road safety research, travel survey methodology, transferability of travel demand models, prioritization procedures, and air quality research
Paul B. Wolshon (M) • Geometric highway design and traffic safety, traffic engineering and analysis, major event and emergency transportation management and operations
Zhong Wu (3F) • Accelerated pavement testing

See departmental website for latest listing.

The departmental-level academic course plan for each student will be developed in consultation with and approved by the student’s graduate advisory committee. The master’s committee will include the student’s major advisor and at least two additional members of the graduate faculty, while the PhD committee will include the student’s major advisor and two additional members of the graduate faculty with an additional committee member (“dean’s representative”) appointed by the Graduate School. More details about graduate committee formation can be found on the department graduate program website.

Programs

• Transportation Engineering Graduate Certificate

• Coastal and Ecological Engineering, M.S.

• Civil Engineering, M.S.CE

• Civil Engineering, Ph.D.