Research Areas

Construction education in the United States produces some of the best construction managers (CM) in history.  The CM’s have the greatest technology, the most information, the best communications, and advanced knowledge of control techniques that have ever been available.  Yet, most construction projects, especially public owned construction projects will be delivered over budget and behind schedule.  Why? The cause is a decrease in productivity in the most general sense.  This decrease has accelerated because of the movement in making construction adversarial element of the economy.  The intent of the Center for Construction Management Innovation is to reverse this trend.  We are taking a two-pronged approach to improving construction productivity.  Improving project delivery methods and contractual relationships is an aim in our courses and research in Leadership.  Leadership theory, principles, and skills are interwoven in the curriculum.  The second thrust is to be on the leading edge of construction technology.  We have pioneered in the application of building information models in the management of construction.

Research websites:

• biLAB

Environmental Engineering and Science focuses on the sustainable use and preservation of natural resources and anthropogenic interactions in an increasingly urbanized world. Its goal is to help plan, functionally design, control, operate and manage municipal and industrial pollution-prevention systems.

The research also includes environmental systems management, monitoring, sensing, and visualization, water security, flood risk management, conflict resolution, river water quality modeling, groundwater modeling, solid and hazardous waste management, contamination remediation, climate change studies, and development of decision support systems and GIS based applications. 

NYU geotechnical group is widely recognized as the leading authority in several areas of geotechnical research including physical modeling of soil structure interaction and multi phase flow using transparent soils, behavior piling made of recycled polymers, micro piling, and ground improvement using soil nails. In addition, recent research included seismic earth pressure, remediation of contaminated soils, sensing, earth pressure against rigidly framed structures, and penetration mechanics of fast traveling projectiles and torpedo anchors.

Research websites:

• MAGICgeo
• Transparent Soils Wiki 
• Plastic Piles Wiki
• Drilled Shaft Deffects
• Seismic Earth Pressure Calculator
• Rigidly Framed Earth Retaining Structures 

Materials research at NYU Tandon’s CUE aims at developing materials solutions to meet the challenges in civil engineering infrastructure with a focus on sustainability and resiliency. We take an interdisciplinary approach to study the microstructure, chemistry, and mechanics of materials and employ both experimental and analytical tools to enhance materials performance for a wide range of applications. Areas of research include

1. Green chemistry of cementitious materials to reduce carbon foot-print (e.g. recycled glass concrete, carbon sequestering infrastructure materials from solid wastes)
2. Fiber reinforced polymer composites for waterfront environments, including drive-ability, durability, and creep of plastic piling;
3. Sensing and materials health monitoring (Opto-chemical sensing for high pH mapping in concrete)
4. Resilient cement composites for structural protection (e.g. Impact and blast attenuating multi-phase cement-matrix composites)
5. Non-cracking concrete materials;
6. Chemo-mechanics and chemical durability of concrete (e.g. ASR, freeze-thaw without air entrainment)
7. Emerging concrete technology (e.g. Conductive, thermo-storing concretes, 3-D printing ultra-high performance concrete). 

We believe that our work will have an impact on the development of a safer, greener and more durable civil engineering infrastructure.

Climate change has increased the frequency of extreme weather events across the United States and the world.  Hurricanes, severe winter weather, and flash floods have become more common in recent years, leading to substantial damage of critical infrastructure. Our research encourages a systems approach to assessing the effects of hazards and climate variability that will inform decision models designed to minimize economic, social and environmental costs while maximizing benefits.

The key goals of our resiliency research include better predicting extreme weather events caused by climate change, providing risk analyses for infrastructure assets and identifying vulnerabilities, improving the robustness of the built environment, and speeding the translation from research to application.

Research websites:

• International Center for Enterprise Preparedness (INTERCEP)

Structural engineering research has dealt primarily with:

1. Material engineering (see above)
2. Soil structure interaction of rigidly framed structures
3. Buckling of beams
4. Fracture mechanics and
5. Structural design

With connected and driverless vehicles, a growing shared economy led by companies like Uber and Lyft, electric cars, and big data from thousands of transportation-related apps empowering travelers, the field of transportation is currently going through a revolution. Transportation as we know it will cease to exist as a result. However, perennial transportation problems will continue to persist, perhaps not in the same way we have studied them in the last century: congestion, traffic accidents, air pollution, fuel consumption, overtaxed freight systems and a crumbling transportation infrastructure.

The transportation research conducted by NYU Tandon and its collaborators promises to reinvent our transportation system by developing the most effective mobility, safety, logistics, and planning and operational solutions to these extremely challenging problems in an ever-changing world. 

Research websites:

• BUILT @ NYU

Urban Informatics research focuses on the acquisition, integration, and analysis of diverse, large-scale data to understand and improve urban systems and quality of life in cities. Researchers seek a better understanding of complex urban systems and operations, utilizing existing and emerging data streams and novel urban sensors to observe, model, and analyze city form and function. Research in urban informatics is directly linked to practice by identifying and deploying new data-driven solutions to the most pressing challenges facing cities and their residents. The goal of this work is to make cities around the world more sustainable, livable, equitable, and resilient.

Research websites:

• biLAB

Research areas cover urban infrastructure engineering and innovative technologies for upgrading infrastructure performance, lifecycle management and resiliency. Current research includes (i) Intelligent infrastructure systems engineering monitoring and management (ii) Artificial intelligence systems for early detection and preemptive mitigation of water leaks and bio contamination anomalies (iii) Smart asset management for energy, water and gas distribution networks (iv) Disaster resiliency of urban infrastructure (v) Transportation infrastructure management in collaboration with NYC DOT and MTA (vi) Infrastructure rehabilitation technologies and Interference Management with NYC DDC (vii) Coastal eco system preservation in water stress regions with UNESCO-IHP (viii) Public education for promoting urban safety culture.