News

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View of the St Anthony Fall Laboratory on the Mississippi River

We are Hiring! Faculty position available in Modeling in Environmental Systems

Posted

The Department of Civil, Environmental and Geo- Engineering at the University of Minnesota is seeking applications for a faculty position in the broad area of Modeling in Environmental Systems. All areas related to systems modeling, decision support, stochastic methods, and computational modeling with applications to environmental or water resources engineering will be considered, including life cycle assessment and technoeconomic analysis, system optimization, computational fluid dynamics in geophysical flows, artificial intelligence and machine learning approaches.
If you have expertise in this area, check out the University of Minnesota, named a Forbes' Best Employer three years in a row (2022, 2023, 2024)!

Paige Novak in her research lab
Department News, Research, Water/Environmental engineering

Recovery of market-valuable products from wastewater? Believe it!

Posted

This research project seeks to enable continuous recovery of high value amino acids and fertilizer at greater productivity and lower cost than state-of-the-art methods.

Headshot Ali Ling outdoors
Alumni, Awards and Honors

Environmental Engineer Ali Ling is One in Forty

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Alison (Ali) Ling (BCE 2008) was named to the AAEES 40 Under 40 List, which recognizes talented individuals who have helped advance the fields of Environmental Science or Environmental Engineering in a demonstrable way within the last 12 months. A nominee must be under 40 at the end of the calendar year in which they are nominated.

Heinz Stefan outside at SAFL, inspecting a vial of water
Department News, Memorials, Water/Environmental engineering

Heinz Stefan, a giant in water quality modeling and environmental hydraulics

Posted

Heinz G. Stefan, Professor Emeritus, Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo- Engineering, died at the age of 89 on November 4, 2025. He did much of his teaching and research at the St Anthony Falls Laboratory.

Water Chemistry front and back cover
Department News, Water/Environmental engineering

Water Chemistry, called a "rare academic unicorn," proves to be useful and readable

Posted

Ngozi Margaret Oguguah calls this book "both intellectually rigorous and surprisingly readable." For classes and for professional reference, you will want to have Patrick Brezonik and William Arnold's book, Water Chemistry: The Chemical Processes and Composition of Natural and Engineered Aquatic Systems.

Gonella and Aziz with an example lattice configuration with topological properties
Department News, Research

New Design Framework Enables Programmable Metamaterials with On-demand Topological States

Posted

“The remarkable aspect of our approach is that, within a single design framework, we can generate a plethora of configurations just by tweaking some parameters in the optimization problem,” said Azizi. “While the different configurations obtained share the same topological character targeted by optimization, they display different and possibly complementary secondary characteristics, including a variety of mechanical and dynamical properties—such as broadband or low-frequency filtering and tailored wave speeds. I believe that such ease and flexibility of design is a significant contribution to the field, providing a pathway to engineering physically realizable structures that combine advanced wave-manipulation capabilities with practical considerations such as load-bearing performance and ease of fabrication.”

falling, blowing snowflakes illuminated against a night sky
Research, Water/Environmental engineering

Tackling the Difficult Problem of Predicting Snowfall Accumulation

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Authors Michele Guala (University of Minnesota Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo-Engineering and the St. Anthony Falls Laboratory) and Jiarong Hong (University of Minnesota Department of Mechanical Engineering and the St. Anthony Falls Laboratory) have been working together in the area of snow imaging and settling for the last 10 years.

3MT CEGE competitors, winner Sarah Ziemann (center) holding plaque
Awards and Honors, Student Activities, Water/Environmental engineering

Plastic degradation in 180 seconds

Posted

Sarah Ziemann (pictured center), a Ph.D. student studying environmental engineering, won the 2025 College of Science and Engineering 3-Minute Thesis Competition. She moves on to the University-level competition, which will be held Friday, November 14th, at 10 am in Coffman Memorial Union Theater (room 110).

Department News

CEGE News Roundup, Fall 2025

Posted

In case you missed something, you can catch up here on what's been happening around UMN's Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo- Engineering.

External view of UMNs Civil Engineering Building
Awards and Honors, Department News, Transportation engineering, Water/Environmental engineering

NSF Career Awards for two CEGE faculty members

Posted

Raphael Stern and Boya Xiong, early career faculty in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo- Engineering, have each received a prestigious Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award from the National Science Foundation (NSF).