Civil and Environmental Engineering
Showing 51-71 of 71 Results
-
Nicholas Ouellette
Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsThe Environmental Complexity Lab studies self-organization in a variety of complex systems, ranging from turbulent fluid flows to granular materials to collective motion in animal groups. In all cases, we aim to characterize the macroscopic behavior, understand its origin in the microscopic dynamics, and ultimately harness it for engineering applications. Most of our projects are experimental, though we also use numerical simulation and mathematical modeling when appropriate. We specialize in high-speed, detailed imaging and statistical analysis.
Our current research includes studies of turbulence in two and three dimensions, with a focus on coherent structures and the geometry of turbulence; the transport of inertial, anisotropic, and active particles in turbulence; the erosion of granular beds by fluid flows and subsequent sediment transport; quantitative measurements of collective behavior in insect swarms and bird flocks; the stability of ocean ecosystems; neural signal processing; and uncovering the natural, self-organized spatiotemporal scales in urban systems. -
Ram Rajagopal
Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, of Electrical Engineering and Senior Fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy
BioRam Rajagopal is an Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University, where he directs the Stanford Sustainable Systems Lab (S3L), focused on large-scale monitoring, data analytics and stochastic control for infrastructure networks, in particular, power networks. His current research interests in power systems are in the integration of renewables, smart distribution systems, and demand-side data analytics.
He holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences and an M.A. in Statistics, both from the University of California Berkeley, Masters in Electrical and Computer Engineering from University of Texas, Austin and Bachelors in Electrical Engineering from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, Powell Foundation Fellowship, Berkeley Regents Fellowship and the Makhoul Conjecture Challenge award. He holds more than 30 patents and several best paper awards from his work and has advised or founded various companies in the fields of sensor networks, power systems, and data analytics. -
Martin Reinhard
Professor (Research) of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Emeritus
BioReinhard studies the fate of organic substances in the subsurface environment and develops technologies for the remediation of groundwater contaminated with chlorinated and non-chlorinated hydrocarbon compounds. His research is concerned with mechanistic aspects of chemical and biological transformation reactions in soils, natural waters, and treatment systems.
-
Brian Sedar
Adjunct Professor
Bio35 years of experience in EPC work spanning project controls, procurement, project development, construction, project management and operations. Bechtel Partner and Project Director for three of Bechtel’s largest international transportation infrastructure projects (click on Projects under Research), High Speed 1 in the UK, Hamad International Airport in Qatar and Upgrades for three London Underground lines. Served as General Manager of Bechtel’s Telecoms & Industrial business, Global Procurement Manager and launched its Global Water business. Now one of Stanford's most experienced construction practitioner-instructors.
-
Chungheon Shin
Research Engineer
BioChungheon Shin is the Research Director of the Codiga Resource Recovery Center at Stanford University. His work focuses on advancing sustainability through resource recovery from waste streams, with the goal of enabling engineering solutions that recover valuable resources while mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. He has developed and optimized innovative treatment processes that integrate biological and physicochemical systems across multiple scales, ranging from reaction kinetics to systems-level analysis, supported by both conventional and data-driven computational models.
He received his Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from Inha University in South Korea, where he developed the Staged Anaerobic Fluidized-bed Membrane Bioreactor (SAF-MBR) for the recovery of clean water and energy from municipal wastewater, working with Professor Jaehoe Bae and Professor Perry L. McCarty. He subsequently served as a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University under the supervision of Professor Craig S. Criddle. -
Barbara G Simpson
Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
BioOur research group is made up of a small team of talented students with a wide range of skills and experience. We explore advanced computational and experimental methods to characterize structural response. Our aim is to develop innovative structural systems that improve structural performance and reduce the effects of natural hazards on the built environment.
Research areas include resilient and sustainable design and retrofit of building structures and offshore renewable energy systems, performance-based earthquake engineering, and next-generation computational modeling, including real-time hybrid simulation for fluid-structure interaction. -
Alfred M. Spormann
Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and of Chemical Engineering, Emeritus
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMetabolism of anaerobic microbes in diseases, bioenergy, and bioremediation
-
Robert Street
William Alden and Martha Campbell Professor in the School of Engineering, Emeritus
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsStreet focuses on numerical simulations related to geophysical fluid motions. His research considers the modeling of turbulence in fluid flows, which are often stratified, and includes numerical simulation of coastal upwelling, internal waves and sediment transport in coastal regions, flow in rivers, valley winds, and the planetary boundary layer.
-
William Abraham Tarpeh
Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering, by courtesy, of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Center Fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy and, by courtesy, at the Woods Institute for the Environment
BioReimagining liquid waste streams as resources can lead to recovery of valuable products and more efficient, less costly approaches to reducing harmful discharges to the environment. Pollutants in effluent streams can be captured and used as valuable inputs to other processes. For example, municipal wastewater contains resources like energy, water, nutrients, and metals. The Tarpeh Lab develops and evaluates novel approaches to resource recovery from “waste” waters at several synergistic scales: molecular mechanisms of chemical transport and transformation; novel unit processes that increase resource efficiency; and systems-level assessments that identify optimization opportunities. We employ understanding of electrochemistry, separations, thermodynamics, kinetics, and reactor design to preferentially recover resources from waste. We leverage these molecular-scale insights to increase the sustainability of engineered processes in terms of energy, environmental impact, and cost.
-
Clyde Tatum
Obayashi Professor in the School of Engineering, Emeritus
BioTatum's teaching interests are construction engineering and technical construction. His research focuses on construction process knowledge and integration and innovation in construction.
-
Tiziana Vanorio
Associate Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Senior Fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy and, by courtesy, of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsRock Physics, Fossil Energy Exploration, Volcanic and Geothermal Environments and Microseismicity
-
Yaochun Yu
Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
BioMy research focuses on functional environmental microbiology and environmental analytical chemistry to uncover and harness microorganisms for chemical biotransformation. We integrate high-resolution mass spectrometry, meta-omics sequencing, molecular microbiology and biochemistry, and computational modeling to identify the functional microbes, genes, and enzymes that drive these processes. Building on these mechanistic insights, we aim to develop environmentally benign chemicals and novel biosolutions for bioremediation and waste-to-resource recovery.
I am also interested in how anthropogenic perturbations (i.e., chemical exposure) reshape microbial biodiversity and ecosystem function across natural and engineered ecosystems. We aim to resolve these cause–effect relationships and, using standardized and synthetic microbial communities, run comparable, hypothesis-driven experiments that translate fundamental insights into predictive tools and practical interventions. The aim is to help keep human activities within the safe operating space of planetary boundaries while advancing environmental and public health. -
Emmett Zeifman
Lecturer
BioEmmett Zeifman is a Canadian architect who teaches in the Sustainable Architecture and Engineering program at Stanford. He is principal of NOUNS, an architecture and design practice, with built projects completed or underway in Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, and elsewhere. His research focuses on the history of modern architecture and its relation to contemporary urbanism, housing and low-carbon approaches to construction. Prior to joining the faculty at Stanford, he taught at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design (2022-24), Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (2017-21), and SCI-Arc (2014-17), as well as the CCA and University of Pennsylvania. He received his M.Phil in Architecture by Research from the University of Cambridge, where he was the 2013-14 Yale Bass Scholar in Architecture, his M.Arch ('11) from the Yale University School of Architecture, and his B.A. ('06) in English literature from McGill University. He recently guest edited Log 64: Toward a Newer Brutalism, or the Undecorated Shed (2025) and curated the exhibition Towards a Newer Brutalism: Solar Pavilions, Appliance Houses and Other Topologies of Contemporary Life (2024) at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Prior to founding NOUNS, he was founding principal of the design practice Medium Office in New York and Los Angeles, with Alfie Koetter, and was architectural designer on a number of super-tall and mixed-use projects in the United States and Southeast Asia at Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates in New York. With Constance Vale, he led the design and construction of the "central hub," a temporary pavilion for the acclaimed opera production Hopscotch in downtown Los Angeles. He was co-founding editor of the independent publication Project: A Journal for Architecture (2011-18), and assistant editor of the Yale publication Rethinking Chongqing: Mixed-Use and Super-Dense (2015), which also featured his photography throughout. His design work and criticism have been widely exhibited and published, and his editorial efforts have been supported by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. In addition to his teaching, he has served as critic and juror and participated in panels and public discussions at numerous institutions, including Barnard, Berkeley, CCA, Columbia, Cooper Union, CUNY, Harvard, MIT, Pratt, SCI-Arc, Storefront for Art and Architecture, UCLA, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, USC, Van Alen Institute, Washington University, and Yale. -
Haoqi (Nina) Zhao
Acting Assistant Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering
BioNina will join Stanford CEE as an Assistant Professor in Summer 2026. Her research bridges computational metabolomics and exposomics to uncover unknown lifestyle chemicals and their impacts on health. Nina earned her B.S. from Peking University, her Ph.D. from the University of Washington, and is currently a postdoctoral scientist at UC San Diego. She received the Pathway to Independence Award (K99/R00) from the National Institutes of Health in 2025.
The Zhao Lab at Stanford will operate at the interface of environmental chemistry, environmental health, and computational mass spectrometry. We aim to identify previously unrecognized chemical drivers that influence human and ecosystem health. We pursue this goal by developing innovative computational and analytical methods centered around untargeted mass spectrometry. Through these efforts, we aim to enable precision environmental health strategies, inform public health policies, and inspire sustainable chemical design.
Current research interests include (but are not limited to):
1.Leveraging mass spectrometry data repositories and advanced informatics tools to systematically map the chemical exposome.
2.Developing tools and resources for mass spectrometry data analysis to advance exposomics research.
3.Investigating host-microbiome-xenobiotic interactions and their impacts on human health.
4.Integrating toxicology with untargeted screening to accelerate the discovery and risk assessment of unknown molecules.
5.Pediatric environmental health: chemical exposures through breastfeeding and their implications for infant development.
6.Traffic-related chemical pollution: environmental fate, occurrence, and relevance to human exposures.
Education
Ph.D., University of Washington, Environmental Engineering (2021)
B.S., Peking University, Environmental Science (2016)
Publications
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=xW9jBO0AAAAJ&hl=en
Email: hqzhao@stanford.edu -
Adam Zsarnoczay
Senior Research Engineer
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsAdam's research focuses on disaster simulations that support multi-hazard risk assessment and management at a regional scale. His research interests include probabilistic natural hazard assessment, model development and calibration for structural response estimation and performance assessment, surrogate modeling and uncertainty quantification in large-scale, regional simulations, and using quantitative disaster simulations to support risk management and mitigation.
