Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering

The Frank Erwin Center is coming down to make way for a new UT Austin-MD Anderson Cancer Center joint medical campus, but even in its demise, the former home of Longhorn basketball and many memorable moments in Austin's musical history is serving an important purpose.

Texas Engineer Javad Mohammadi has dedicated his research to strengthening power grids, using artificial intelligence to make them more resistant to evolving threats.

The crash of waves on the beach to many is the picture of peace and relaxation, but it’s also an important moment in the surrounding landscape. Known as the swash zone, where waves run up the face of the beach, this area is where crucial sand movement occurs, shaping the world’s coastlines over time and impacting flooding and other weather events.  

Texas Engineers are creating a new community to unite civil engineers, cyberinfrastructure professionals and experts in artificial intelligence to better understand and protect our virtual and physical infrastructure.

A new “digital twin” of The University of Texas at Austin campus gives the clearest picture yet of historical and current energy usage across the Forty Acres — from engineering labs, to medical facilities, to sports stadiums, to residence halls.

Large chunks of the Navajo Nation in the Southwest lack access to clean drinkable water, a trend that has been rising in many parts of the U.S. in recent years. A research team led by engineers with The University of Texas at Austin aims to change that.

The University of Texas at Austin will reimagine its approach to training civil, architectural and environmental engineering students as society’s designers, with a renewed emphasis on leadership and service needed to solve global challenges. A transformational investment from a UT alumnus will galvanize this approach, which he calls “engineering the big.”

There's a growing body of research showing that members of marginalized populations are more likely to be involved in severe or fatal crashes as pedestrians, and that disparity is on the rise.

Recent research from Texas Engineers unravels the reasons behind this trend. Looking at data from the city of Houston, the researchers found that vehicle-pedestrian crashes are far more frequent in primarily Black neighborhoods compared to non-Black neighborhoods, and infrastructure was the main reason.

Fernanda Leite, professor in the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering, will become the Cockrell School of Engineering’s new associate dean for research later this year.

The National Academy of Engineering has elected Benny Freeman, a professor in the McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, to the academy for 2023. Alumnus Fariborz Maseeh, who received a master’s degree in civil engineering from UT Austin, has also been elected.

The landscape of buildings that populate cities around the world are both major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, and potentially, significant suppliers of energy to the electrical grid. As a result, there is a movement around the world, across multiple industries, to better control building emissions and energy usage.

A competition created by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin challenges teams of engineers and scientists to deploy artificial intelligence to improve building energy consumption. Now in its third year, the CityLearn Challenge is the biggest it’s ever been, with more than 600 people from 50 countries, across roughly 100 teams, participating.

Ervin S. Perry and T.U. Taylor were inducted into the Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Academy of Distinguished Alumni, becoming the first posthumous inductees in the academy's history. 

Nine faculty members from across the Cockrell School of Engineering have earned the National Science Foundation's prestigious Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) awards. The awards provide up to five years of funding to junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of their organizations’ missions.

Four Texas universities, led by The University of Texas at Austin, have been awarded a grant to establish a new research center to study the risks and impacts of flooding and air pollution in a fast-growing part of Southeast Texas. The scientists will focus on the interactions between these two key issues, as well as their potential acceleration under various climate scenarios.

The Center for Materials for Water and Energy Systems (M-WET) has been studying novel membrane-based approaches — and new materials — to change how we purify water for four years, and that work will continue after the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) renewed funding for the initiative. M-WET will receive an additional $12 million over another four years, through DOE’s Energy Frontier Research Center Program.

In recent years, more vehicles include partially autonomous driving features, such as blind spot detectors, automatic braking and lane sensing, that are said to increase safety. However, a recent study by researchers from The University of Texas at Austin finds that some of that safety benefit may be offset by people driving more, thereby clogging up roads and exposing themselves to more potential crashes.

The University of Texas at Austin has named Lydia Contreras as its new vice provost for faculty diversity, equity and inclusivity, effective immediately. Contreras, who currently holds the Jim and Barbara Miller Endowed Faculty Fellowship in Chemical Engineering, has served for the past two years as the managing director of diversity in the Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost.

Mimicking the human body, specifically the actuators that control muscle movement, is of immense interest around the globe. In recent years, it has led to many innovations to improve robotics, prosthetic limbs and more, but creating these actuators typically involves complex processes, with expensive and hard-to-find materials. Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and Penn State University have created a new type of fiber that can perform like a muscle actuator, in many ways better than other options that exist today. And, most importantly, these muscle-like fibers are simple to make and recycle.

Getting people out of their cars in auto-centric cities will likely take both carrot and stick policymaking, according to a new survey from The University of Texas at Austin and Arizona State University. The survey found that 68% of people surveyed were happy with using cars for non-commute trips. And while many of these drivers want to live in neighborhoods with a mixture of businesses and residential and healthy transit, they still prefer the convenience of driving their own car. Furthermore, the report found that more car use for non-commute trips generally led to increased satisfaction with their travel situation.

Two Cockrell School of Engineering faculty members have been elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society. The honor recognizes important contributions to the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics—including pioneering research, leadership within a given field, teaching and mentoring, fostering collaborations, and advancing public understanding of science.