CvEEN is proud to offer research opportunities in a number of unique areas.
Civil Engineering
Studies in Construction Engineering prepare focus on the planning, design, management, and execution of construction projects. Construction Engineering combines principles of Civil Engineering with project management and business aspects to create professionals who are capable of overseeing and coordinating complex construction projects from inception to completion.
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Environmental Engineers work to improve public health and quality of life, while protecting and restoring environmental systems. These engineers focus on drinking water treatment, wastewater reclamation, air pollution control, solid waste management and environmental remediation.
Professors in this area:
Geotechnical Engineering is the application of Civil Engineering technology to some aspect of the earth, usually the soil and rock found on or near the surface. Infrastructure and natural geologic landforms and hazards designed and/or analyzed by Geotechnical Engineers include foundations for many types of structures (for example, buildings, bridges, dams, and roadways), natural and human-made slopes, retaining walls, tunnels, earthen dams and levees, highway embankments, earthquakes, liquefaction and lateral spread, ground contamination, ground improvement and stabilization, lightweight embankment materials, and re-use of construction and other waste materials. Sub-disciplines and related disciplines include Soil Mechanics, Rock Mechanics, Foundation Engineering, Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering, Geoenvironmental Engineering, and Geological Engineering.
Professors in this area:
- Materials deals with the durability of materials. For example, better portland cement concrete does not fall apart from intrusion of chemicals (salts, etc.), better asphalt concrete will not be susceptible to water intrusions (e.g., less potholes during the spring thaw)
- When materials last longer, the maintenance cycle is extended (i.e., less often) resulting in substantial savings
- Better materials also reduce the carbon footprint of everything we built.
- Concrete last between 20 to 50 years and is responsible for 5% of all greenhouse emission in the planet
- Over $40M are spend every year in road maintenance. Given a 10 year cycle, a simple improvement of 1 year will result in $4M in savings. That's every year!
Professors in this area:
- Structural engineering involves learning the theory of structures such as buildings and bridges, and includes computer-aided engineering and structural dynamics, and earthquake and wind engineering analysis and design. Structural engineers carry out performance-based design and study the behavior of structures built using reinforced and prestressed concrete, structural steel, timber, or composites. Moreover, structural engineers are involved in mitigating the impact of natural hazards and extreme weather using advanced structural sensing, hybrid simulation and reliability, to improve infrastructure resilience.
Professors in this area:
- The transportation engineering program in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering emphasis on the applications of state-of-art advancements concerning planning, design, operations, maintenance, and assessment of transportation systems. The faculty conducts research in the area of the transportation system design and modeling, addresses contemporary issues such as shared mobility, vehicle electrification and automation, and stresses the development of computational analytics and problem-solving skill sets.
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Water resources engineers plan and design infrastructure systems to provide clean drinking water, collect and treat wastewater, supply water for agriculture, protect from floods, prevent adverse water quality impacts, increase efficiency, address greenhouse gas emissions, and mitigate drought impacts. Today’s exciting opportunities for civil engineers include applications of smart technologies, distributed sensor systems, artificial intelligence, natural systems, biotechnology, robots, social sensing, and more to make water systems of all kinds more sustainable and resilient.
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Nuclear Engineering
Housed within the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Utah, the Utah Nuclear Engineering Program (UNEP). UNEP has developed a nuclear engineering curriculum that fills critical educational and competency gaps for engineers and scientists involved in the nuclear power and radioactive waste industries, nuclear medicine, homeland security, radiation safety, and nuclear materials detection. UNEP has an undergraduate minor and two graduate degrees (M.S. non-thesis and Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering). The requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree are established to meet the expectations of nuclear industry in the state of Utah, the nation, and the world. UNEP is responsible for educating the next generation workforce in critical nuclear engineering fields and developing innovative procedures and technologies for the advancement of nuclear applications.
Professors in this area:
Radiation Detection Laboratories
- Reverse Electrode Coaxial Ge Detectors (REGe)
- Broad Energy Germanium Detector (BEGe)
- Liquid Scintillation Counters
- Alpha Spectrometer
- Gamma Counter
- Custom built radiation detection capabilities (i.e. CLYC, neutron and gamma spectroscopy, semiconductors)
Radiochemistry Laboratories
- Double beam temperature controlled UV-VIS (Cary 300)
- Metrohm 905 Titrando Potentiometric Titrator
- TA Instruments TAM III Isothermal Titration Nanocalorimeter
- High vacuum fluorination system (-100°C to 1000°C)
- Atmosphere controlled furnaces (25°C to 1400°C with inert and reactive gases (He2, N2, O2, and H2)).
- Inert glove boxes with electrochemical cells
- Class II Biological Safety Cabinet
- Cell Culture
- RadioTLC plate reader
- High Pressure Liquid Chromatography
100 kW TRIGA Reactor
- Thermal irradiation port (heavy water chamber)
- Fast irradiation port
- In-core radiochemical separations for isotope production
Computational Resources
- NVIDIA DGX-1 Deep Learning Supercomputer
- Four high performance computing clusters including Notchpeak (2144 cores), Kingspeak (8292 cores), Ember (2204 cores, and Ash (7468 cores).
Structure Laboratories (Collaborations with Civil Engineering)
- Actuators with capacity up to 2,000 kips in compression, 1,500 kips in tension and a stroke of 30 in.
- Drop hammer (1 kip steel weight from 3 to 16 ft.)
- INSTRON 400 HVL
- Quasi-static experiment tests on large scale concrete and steel components
- Three-dimension Steel Load Frame
Material Science Laboratories (Collaborations with Nanofab)
- Radionuclide characterization via scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and x-ray diffractometry
Neutron Activation and Radiation Detection
- Detector development and testing
- Radiation hardness experimentation
- Development of electronics for radiation applications
- In-situ gamma and neutron testing
- Radiation transport simulation
- Environmental Monitoring of trace contaminants such as polyflouroalkyl compounds (PFAS)
- Development of combined neutron and gamma radiation detectors
- Advanced ADCs and pulse processing electronics
- Probe station for irradiation studies
Actinide Chemistry and Radiochemistry
- Pre- and post- detonation nuclear forensics
- f-element compound synthesis and thermodynamic measurements
- Synthesis and evaluation of novel resins for separation of actinides and lanthanides
- Production of high purity targets for heavy actinide production (Am and Pu)
- Radionuclide transport modelling
- Radionuclide remediation strategies such as engineered barriers
Nuclear Materials and Structural Analysis
- Mechanical assessment of nuclear waste storage and transportation casks.
- Mechanical evaluation of spent nuclear fuel rod and fuel assembly.
- Mechanical assessment of nuclear waste storage and transportation casks.
- Nuclear fuel synthesis (U-Mo, UC, UN, etc.), thermodynamic and microstructural testing
- Neutron and gamma damage experimentation, analysis, and modelling
- Radiation sources for radiography of materials
- Post-irradiation structural sample testing
Isotope Production and Nuclear Medicine
- Production and separation of radionuclides for imaging and treatment of cancer and various other diseases
- Targeted radiotherapy applications
- PET/SPECT imaging applications (small animal imaging facility access at the University of Utah School of Medicine)
- Production of trace quantities of actinides including Pa, Np, Pu, and Am
Nuclear Systems Analysis and Radiation Detection
- Nuclear systems analysis / systems engineering
- Radiation transport simulations / reactor analysis, small reactor design
- Importance function biasing / detector response
- Radiation hardness experimentation
- Electronics for all radiation applications
- In-situ gamma and neutron testing with model validation, efficiency profiling
- Thermal system assessment and analysis
- Environmental monitoring of trace contaminants