Message from the Chair

Dr. Branko Glisic is professor and chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Before his appointment as chair in 2023, he served as the department’s Director of Undergraduate Studies as well as Director of the Program in Archaeology. His expertise encompasses the multidisciplinary areas of structural health monitoring, smart structures, and heritage structures. He teaches courses in structural analysis, structural health monitoring,structural art, and heritage structures.
 
 
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Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) is an exciting, vibrant, continuously growing, and rapidly evolving discipline which plays a crucial role in addressing humanity’s most vital societal challenges related to climate change, accelerated urban growth, and the depletion of natural resources. While addressing these vital challenges requires multidisciplinary efforts, CEE is uniquely capable to holistically understand the complexity of these challenges on a global scale, and furthermore to innovate and integrate advancements in engineering sciences, natural sciences, social sciences, and the arts into effective global solutions. This diverse toolkit establishes CEE at the center of addressing our most vital societal challenges and propels it to the forefront of providing safe, resilient, sustainable, livable, and highly functional – though decidedly and resolutely beautiful – built and natural environments.

Who are Civil and Environmental Engineers? They are designers, creators, and protectors of our large-scale built assets, such as – but not limited to – green buildings, robust bridges, resistant geotechnical structures, strong dams, reliable lifelines, infrastructural networks, smart structures, and heritage structures… Civil and Environmental Engineers are also curators, guardians, and providers of our large-scale environmental assets, such as – but, yet again, not limited to – fresh water, clean air, unpolluted soil, and decarbonized energy... With their monumental works and achievements, carried out with the highest level of professionalism and ethical standards, Civil and Environmental Engineers responsibly transform nature and society, thereby shaping the planet and the well-being of countless generations on a global scale.

CEE at Princeton fosters and cultivates a welcoming, diverse, inclusive, friendly, and highly collaborative ambience. Undergraduate and graduate curriculums in CEE at Princeton are carefully crafted into coherent sequences of foundational and advanced engineering science courses that incorporate cutting-edge design and manufacturing, as well as state-of-the-art laboratory and field experiences, to incite students’ imagination and creativity along with their interests in research, interdisciplinarity, travel, and society at large.

Our wonderful students are taught, mentored, and coached by our faculty and lecturers who are recognized as leaders in their fields of expertise, are passionate about teaching and research, and are deeply devoted to students. We are proud to guide our students as they build up strong disciplinary and multidisciplinary knowledge, acquire the skills to work both individually and in teams, learn to think independently, open-mindedly, and out of the box, and develop the confidence to tackle global problems and become the leaders who solve them.

Branko Glisic Signature

Branko Glišić, Ph.D., F.ISHMII

Branko Glisic
Chair and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Associated Faculty of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering