Built Environment

Civil and environmental engineers design, build, and maintain the built environment, i.e., the roads, buildings, drinking water facilities, and other infrastructure systems that serve society.

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Our department’s research is focused on increasing the equity, durability, and resiliency of this built environment. Equity requires that everything civil and environmental engineers build, operate, and maintain serve human wellbeing to consider the varying needs of different groups within our society, including working to identify and work toward righting historical inequalities.

Durability is needed to ensure that infrastructure meets its intended purpose over its expected service life. Resilience is needed to mitigate the impacts of climate change and natural disasters, allowing communities to quickly recover from extreme events and adapt to new conditions. This includes transportation engineers finding new ways to reconnect a community divided by a highway, structural engineers implementing new monitoring systems to understand health of a built system, and environmental engineers bringing clean drinking water to a community that lacks access to this basic human need.

CEE Faculty in the Built Environment

Negin Alemazkoor

Assistant Professor
The overarching objective of my research is to develop sensing and computing methodologies for fast and reliable analysis of smart and interconnected infrastructure systems under uncertainty. My research is inherently multi-disciplinary and aims to advance reliability and resilience of…
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Email na7fp@virginia.edu

T. Donna Chen

Associate Professor

Dr. Chen joined the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Virginia in August 2015.
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Email tdchen@virginia.edu
Phone (434) 924-6224

Andrés F. Clarens

Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering Associate Director, Environmental Institute

Andrés Clarens is a Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UVA and Associate Director of the Pan-University Environmental Resilience Institute. His research is focused broadly on understanding anthropogenic carbon flows and the ways that CO2 is manipulated, reused, and sequestered in engineered systems.
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Email andres@virginia.edu

Diana Franco Duran

Assistant Professor Director, Civil Engineering Undergraduate Program Director, Construction Engineering and Management Track

Diana Franco Duran is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. She is the director of the Civil Engineering Undergraduate Program, and manages the Construction Engineering and Management (CEM) concentration.
UVA CEM Program
Email dmf8a@virginia.edu
Phone (434) 243-8765

Jose Pantaleon Gomez III

Lecturer

Jose Gomez was recently the Director of Research for the Virginia Transportation Research Council, the Virginia Department of Transportation’s research division until he retired in 2016. Highlights from his career include co-Principal Investigator on 16 external grants totaling over $5.4 million in research and co-author of 42 research reports.
Email jpg4k@virginia.edu

Devin K. Harris

Professor of Civil Engineering Chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Professor Harris is chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Virginia. His research and teaching interests focus on large scale infrastructure systems with a primary focus on condition monitoring and system performance.
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Email dkh2a@virginia.edu
Phone (434) 924-6373

Arsalan Heydarian

Associate Professor

Arsalan Heydarian is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering as well as the UVA Link Lab. His research broadly focuses on user-centered design, construction, and operation of intelligent infrastructure with the objective of enhancing their sustainability, adaptability, and resilience. 
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Email ah6rx@virginia.edu

Lindsay Ivey-Burden

Assistant Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering Academic General Faculty, Teaching Track Director, Center for Transportation Studies

Dr. Ivey-Burden joined the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Virginia in January 2012. Her research and teaching interests include geotechnical engineering, foundations engineering, solid waste management, risk analysis in infrastructure systems, geotechnical earthquake engineering, and geophysical testing techn
Website
Email li6n@virginia.edu
Phone (434) 243-1250

Leidy Klotz

Professor
Leidy Klotz is filling in underexplored overlaps between engineering and behavioral science, in pursuit of more sustainable systems. He has published over 80 peer-reviewed articles in venues that include top academic journals in built environment engineering, engineering education, and design, as…
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Email lk6me@virginia.edu

James H. Lambert

Janet Scott Hamilton and John Downman Hamilton Professor Director, Center for Risk Management of Engineering Systems Site Director, NSF Center for Hardware and Embedded Systems Security & Trust Professor of Systems & Information Engineering Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering Chair, Faculty Senate of the University of Virginia (2024-25)
Dr. Lambert is a General Co-Chair of the IEEE 11th International Conference on Control, Decision and Information Technologies CoDIT2025.org. He was the Chair of CESUN2021.org, Chair of the Fifth World Congress on Risk (Cape Town, South Africa, 2019), President (2015-2016) of the Society for Risk…
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Email lambert@virginia.edu

Osman E. Ozbulut

Professor

Osman Ozbulut is a Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Virginia.
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Email oeo5c@virginia.edu
Phone (434) 924-7230

B. Brian Park

Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor, Systems and Information Engineering Director, Traffic Operations Laboratory

Brian Park is a Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Department of Systems and Information Engineering at the University of Virginia. His research focuses on improving the efficiency of surface transportation systems via connected automated vehicle controls, traffic operations and management strategies.  
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Email bp6v@virginia.edu

Lisa Colosi Peterson

Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering Associate Chair for Research & Strategic Initiatives

Lisa Colosi Peterson is a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and director of the UVA Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Lab.
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Email lmc6b@virginia.edu

Brian L. Smith, PE

Professor Senior Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Affairs

Brian L. Smith, PE is a leader in advanced technology in surface transportation systems - specifically "connecting" the infrastructure to travelers to improve transportation safety and efficiency. His research has contributed to innovations such as mobile phone navigation systems and urban freeway management.
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Email bls2z@virginia.edu
Phone (434) 243-8585

James A. Smith

Henry L. Kinnier Professor of Civil Engineering

James A. Smith is an environmental engineer holding the Henry L. Kinnier Chair of Civil Engineering in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UVA. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Civil Engineering from Virginia Tech in 1983 and 1984, and his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Princeton University in 1992.
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Email jas9e@virginia.edu
Phone (434) 924-7991