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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.

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

08/21/2026

Santiago Gonzalez Bonilla finished his undergraduate degree with a job offer already in hand, but he wanted to keep his options open. That choice brought him to Rice's Master of Civil and Environmental Engineering program, and today he is a structural engineer at Thornton Tomasetti.

From earthquake engineering to a capstone on deployable structures, the MCEE gave Santiago a foundation he could draw on from his very first days on the job.

Read how the MCEE helped Santiago launch his career: https://cee.rice.edu/news/rice-mcee-graduate-builds-foundation-structural-engineering-industry

08/18/2026

Congratulations to rising senior Jordi De Jong on receiving the 2026 AIH-RISE Distinguished Recognition for Academic Excellence from the American Institute of Hydrology.

The AIH-RISE Student Award recognizes outstanding academic achievement, research innovation, leadership, and professional promise among undergraduate and graduate students in hydrology-related fields. Nominated by Professor Phil Bedient, director of the SSPEED Center, Jordi earned the award for her academic performance, her research experiences and international study, and her practical work in flood management, stormwater engineering, and hydrologic modeling. Through classroom achievement, professional experience, and engagement in water-resources challenges, she has demonstrated exceptional promise as an emerging hydrologist and engineer.

👏Join us in celebrating Jordi on this remarkable accomplishment. https://aihydrology.org/announcing-the-aih-2026-rise-recipients/

08/05/2026

Cleaning hazardous industrial wastewater and recovering valuable metals used to take two separate, expensive steps that left behind toxic sludge.

A breakthrough from Rice and Vanderbilt University, published in Nature Water, does both at once using electrochemical ion pumping (EIP). Led by Shihong Lin, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, with postdoctoral researcher Longqian Xu as first author, the team built a platform that programs electrode voltage to desalinate water and selectively harvest metals in a single continuous process, with no chemical additives required.

The results speak for themselves. Tests showed 90% salt removal while trapping nearly all of the copper on the electrode, and in a more complex mixture, the system captured copper at about 96% purity relative to nickel.

A scalable bridge between industrial water reuse and circular-economy resource recovery.

Read more: https://news.rice.edu/news/2026/rice-researchers-develop-technology-clean-salty-wastewater-while-recovering-valuable

07/24/2026

Rice University spinout LumiStrain just landed a $1.55M NSF SBIR Fast-Track award, one of only 15 companies selected nationwide.

Co-developed by civil and environmental engineering professor Satish Nagarajaiah and team, its Strain Sensing Smart Skin combines an ultrathin carbon-nanotube sensing film with a noncontact optical imaging system to show engineers exactly where structures bend, strain and wear before problems surface. The technology has already been put to the test in the field, including during an Airbus A220 airframe certification test.

Read more: https://news.rice.edu/news/2022/strain-sensing-smart-skin-ready-deploy

07/22/2026

Can protecting wetlands help pay for coastal protection? A new Rice-led study is testing exactly that.

The Gulf Coast Protection District has approved a 12-month study, led by Rice's SSPEED Center, to explore whether blue carbon credits could help finance coastal erosion protection along the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway in Galveston County. Healthy marshes store carbon and protect communities from storm surge, so if preserving them generates verified, sellable carbon credits, that revenue could help fund living shoreline structures while reducing reliance on federal and state dollars alone.

The team will assess roughly 50 miles of shoreline to determine where this model could work and whether it could scale across the Gulf Coast.

Read more: https://news.rice.edu/news/2026/rice-study-explores-blue-carbon-financing-texas-coastal-protection

07/08/2026

Celebrating a wonderful achievement for one of our graduate students.

Wei-Ming Kung, a PhD student in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, has been awarded the Joint Chinese College Alumni Association of Southern USA Mr. Man-De Yu and Mrs. Jin Yang Memorial Scholarship, which honors students of Taiwanese heritage in Texas for academic excellence in the sciences.

Advised by Dr. Qilin Li, Wei-Ming develops advanced water treatment technologies for water reuse. His research applies environmental chemistry along with biology and physics to study how electrochemical oxidation processes remove contaminants and improve the safety and sustainability of wastewater treatment, work that supports cleaner water and more resilient communities.

This recognition reflects both his dedication and the strength of the scholarly community that surrounds our graduate students. Join us in celebrating Wei-Ming and this meaningful milestone in his academic journey.

07/07/2026

More than 15 years ago, researchers at Rice's SSPEED Center asked a question that would reshape how we think about the Texas coast: what kind of economy could survive on a hurricane-prone shoreline?

That question has now reached Congress. U.S. Rep. Randy Weber has introduced H.R. 9325, the Lone Star Coastal National Recreation Area Act, a concept that grew out of work by Jim Blackburn, co-director of the SSPEED Center and professor in the practice of environmental law in Rice's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, along with research partner Elizabeth Winston-Jones and others after Hurricane Ike struck in 2008.

The answer they found was rooted in the coast itself. Native ecosystems like wetlands, bays and barrier islands absorb storm impacts and recover in ways conventional development cannot, and they can support birding, kayaking, fishing and heritage tourism at the same time. The proposed recreation area would rely on voluntary participation, local leadership and partnerships, preserving state land and private property rights.

https://news.rice.edu/news/2026/rices-sspeed-center-helped-shape-coastal-recreation-vision-now-congress

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

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