| The diverse expertise within the Department of Civil Engineering enable us to address several grand challenges related to biomedical engineering with the goal of building healthier communities. These included studying the fate and transport of pathogens in ground water systems and their subsequent impact on the environment and human health. In addition, we study flow of contaminated water (e.g. with radionuclides or heavy metals) in fractured rock systems. The department also has an ongoing program on the systemic risk of hydraulic fracking on ground water aquifers. Our faculty considers medical evacuation plans and medical resource allocation and optimization under national- or regional-levels disasters (e.g. nuclear release, wild fire, etc.) in order to ensure the health and resilience of our communities. With a strong foundation in mechanics, we equip our graduates with the necessary tools to model human body motion dynamics and responses to extreme loading conditions (e.g. explosions) as well as simulating human injuries (e.g. bone fracture, traumatic brain injuries, etc.) using numerical tools (e.g. finite element analysis). Realizing the importance of our healthcare infrastructure, we educate students on state-of-the-art methods to ensure the resilience of such critical infrastructure systems in order to avoid cascading failure under natural or man-induced hazards. |