2009-2010 Bulletin – PDF - SEAS Bulletin - Columbia University

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CIVIL ENGINEERING AND ENGINEERING MECHANICS
610 S.W. Mudd, MC 4709, 854-3143; info@civil.columbia.edu
www.civil.columbia.edu
CHAIR
Upmanu Lall
DEPARTMENTAL
ADMINISTRATOR
Elaine MacDonald
PROFESSORS
Raimondo Betti
Bruno A. Boley
Patricia J. Culligan
Gautam Dasgupta
George Deodatis
Morton B. Friedman
Upmanu Lall
Earth and Environmental
Engineering
Hoe I. Ling
Richard W. Longman
Mechanical Engineering
Christian Meyer
Feniosky Peña-Mora
Rene B. Testa
ASSOCIATE PROFESSORS
Andrew Smyth
ASSISTANT PROFESSORS
Nicola Chiara
John E. Taylor
Haim Waisman
Huiming Yin
LECTURER
Jose I. Sanchez
ADJUNCT STAFF
William Becker
Logan Brant
Aine M. Brazil
Julius Chang
Eli B. Gottlieb
Bettina Gurpide
William M. Hart
Wilfred Laufs
Samuel A. Leifer
Aly M. Mohammad
Nasri Munfah
Robert D. Mutch
Mysore Nagaraja
Reza Nikain
Gary F. Panariello
Tom Papachristos
Thomas Panayotidi
Daniel Peterson
Robert Ratay
Robert A. Rubin
Vincent Tirolo
Richard L. Tomasetti
Pawel Woelke
Bojidar Yanev
Theodore P. Zoli
STAFF ASSOCIATE
Adrian Brügger
INFORMATION
TECHNOLOGY MANAGER
Jon A. Van
The Department of Civil Engineering
and Engineering Mechanics
focuses on two broad areas of
instruction and research. The first, the
classical field of civil engineering, deals
with the planning, design, construction,
and maintenance of the built environment.
This includes buildings, foundations,
bridges, transportation facilities,
nuclear and conventional power plants,
hydraulic structures, and other facilities
essential to society. The second is the
science of mechanics and its applications
to various engineering disciplines.
Frequently referred to as applied
mechanics, it includes the study of the
mechanical and other properties of materials,
stress analysis of stationary and
movable structures, the dynamics and
vibrations of complex structures, aeroand
hydrodynamics, and the mechanics
of biological systems.
MISSION
The Department aims to provide students
with a technical foundation anchored in
theory together with the breadth needed
to follow diverse career paths, whether
in the profession via advanced study or
apprenticeship, or as a base for other
pursuits.
Current Research Activities
Current research activities in the
Department of Civil Engineering and
Engineering Mechanics are centered in
the areas outlined below. A number of
these activities impact directly on problems
of societal importance, such as
rehabilitation of the infrastructure, mitigation
of natural or man-made disasters,
and environmental concerns.
Solid mechanics: mechanical properties
of new and exotic materials, constitutive
equations for geologic materials,
failure of materials and components,
properties of fiber-reinforced cement
composites, damage mechanics.
• Multihazard risk assessment and mitigation:
integrated risk studies of the
civil infrastructure form a multihazard
perspective including earthquake,
wind, flooding, fire, blast, and terrorism.
The engineering, social, financial,
and decision-making perspectives of
the problem are examined in an integrated
manner.
• Probabilistic mechanics: random
processes and fields to model uncertain
loads and material/soil properties, nonlinear
random vibrations, reliability and
safety of structural systems, computational
stochastic mechanics, stochastic
finite element and boundary element
techniques, Monte Carlo simulation
techniques, random micromechanics.
SEAS 2009–2010