Geotechnical Engineering

Civil Engineering undergraduate students involved in the Geotechnical Engineering Concentration gain a solid civil engineering foundation through a wide array of courses, and then focus on elective courses to individualize the program and best suit their career goals.

The Geotechnical Engineering Concentration focuses on the ways natural materials are characterized and used for civil engineering construction. Historically, the geotechnical engineering program focused on structural foundations, slope stability, and earth dams. Today, the program’s scope of activities includes natural and man-made hazard mitigation, advanced techniques for site and material characterization, constitutive modeling of natural materials, design of pavement systems, and geo-environmental assessment and remediation.

The faculty offers a broad and varied background, rich in long term practical experience and strong in theoretical mechanics and experimental modeling of geomaterials. Faculty members in the group provide the diversity that enables a comprehensive course curriculum and a wide range of research opportunities to be offered to incoming undergraduate students.