The USC Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering is actively seeking outstanding PhD students in leading-edge areas of civil and environmental engineering, including air pollution, coastal engineering, construction information technology, geomechanics, nuclear safety, risk and uncertainty quantification, smart structures, and water quality.  The best PhD applicants will be eligible for fellowships and financial aid packages including monthly stipends and all tuition/fees for 4-5 years.  We are particularly interested in applications from students to work with one of our new faculty, Associate Professor Patrick Lynett and Professor Lucio Soibelman; short descriptions of their research and a few others are appended below.

More information on our PhD programs and applications can be found at http://cee.usc.edu/admission/phd-programs/ -- all application materials must be received before the end of the year.

 

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Dr. Patrick Lynett, who joined USC in 2011 as an associate professor, is examining the flooding and consequent impacts of tsunami and storms waves, on a range of scales from kilometers to centimeters, using high performance
computing and controlled experiments. Results of this work are being used to design structures, optimize operations in important facilities like ports, and assess the safety of nuclear power plants.

Dr. Lucio Soibelman, who will join USC in 2012 as Professor and the new Chair of the department, focuses on the use of information technology for economic development, information technology support for construction management, process integration during the development of large-scale engineering systems.  This research includes tools such as information
logistics, artificial intelligence, data mining, knowledge discovery, image reasoning, text mining, machine learning, multi-reasoning mechanisms, sensors, sensor networks, and advanced infrastructure systems.

Dr. Roger Ghanem, Gordon S. Marshall Professor, investigates the characterization, propagation and management of uncertainty in physical and engineered systems, and their effects on the performance of these systems,
particularly exploring the relationships between the uncertainty at the component (microscale) and the system macroscale) levels, quantifying the sensitivities to uncertainty at the different layers to optimize resource allocation, and formulating decisions related to risk reduction and hazard mitigation in problems across science and engineering.

Dr. Najm Meshkati, a professor in both Civil Engineering and Industrial & Systems Engineering, is particularly interested in aspects of nuclear safety (such as related to the Fukushima meltdown in March 2011) and other industrial safety issues (such as the offshore oil accidents).

Dr. Costas Sioutas, Fred Champion Professor and Director of the USC Aerosol Lab, is investigating the underlying mechanisms that produce the health effects associated with exposure to air pollutants generated by a variety of
sources, such as traffic, harbor and airport operations, power plants, and photochemically induced atmospheric reactions.  In particular, his work focuses on particulate matter and its gaseous precursors in the atmosphere,
seeking to understand how toxic mechanisms and resulting health effects attributable to these air pollutants vary with their source, chemical composition and physical characteristics.