PhD Engineering – Environment & Water Emphasis

Environmental, water, and human systems are fundamentally interdependent; thus, the complex water, energy, food, environmental quality, and resource allocation issues facing society require integrated and comprehensive approaches to problem solving. The Environment and Water program draws from many disciplines to develop new approaches and effective solutions to the major water and environmental challenges of our times. The program offers students tremendous flexibility in designing a graduate program that builds in-depth skills and breadth of knowledge in their area of interest. Students conduct cutting edge research on a wide range of topics including environmental fluid dynamics, hydrology and hydraulics, water resources management and sustainability, marine ecosystem and coastal ocean circulation models, coupled human-natural systems, solid waste, stream and watershed restoration, drinking water and wastewater treatment, diffuse pollution abatement, systems modeling, and life cycle analysis. The program leverages UGA’s broad strengths in building multidisciplinary teams that include experts in ecology, environmental design, public health, social sciences, and policy.

Admission to the Emphasis

Program of Study

Requirements for the Ph.D. in Engineering with Emphasis in Environment and Water further expand on those of the Ph.D. in Engineering. These include a minimum of 72 credit hours in the student’s program of study beyond the B.S. degree. A thesis master’s degree from an approved university may be accepted for up to 30 credits hours, in which case a minimum of 42 credit hours of approved course work, research and dissertation beyond the M.S. degree would be required as follows:

  • A minimum of 16 semester hours of coursework, which must include
    • At least 15 hours of 8000- and 9000-level courses in addition to research, dissertation writing, and directed study of which 9 hours must be selected from the Environment and Water Course List (below).
    • 1 hour of Graduate Seminar ENGR 8950*
  • A minimum of 23 Doctoral Research hours (Doctoral research (9000) or Doctoral project-focused research (9010)) for students with an M.S. **
  • The Program of Study must include 3 hours of ENGR 9300 Doctoral Dissertation.

* Only 3 hours of Graduate Seminar may apply on the Ph.D. Program of Study. Students are strongly encouraged to continue regular attendance of speaker series presentations even if not formally registered in the seminar.

** A typical student’s total research hours will exceed these minimums.

As a requirement of the Ph.D. Engineering with an Emphasis in Environment and Water, students must complete a minimum of 9 credit hours selected from the Environment and Water Course List below. Students work with their graduate advisor to select the most appropriate coursework to ensure breadth of understanding as well as mastery of knowledge in a specific subject area. In addition to completing 9 credit hours selected from the list below, students may work with their graduate advisor to develop an interdisciplinary plan of coursework drawing from the extensive graduate course offerings available at UGA.

Environment and Water Course List​

  • ENVE 8450 Design for Rapid Change: Food, Energy, and Water
  • ENGR 8103 Computational Engineering
  • CVLE 8110 Environmental River Mechanics
  • CRSS(GEOL) 8710Watershed-Scale Modeling
  • CVLE 8140 Mixing & Transport
  • ENGR 8103 Computational Engineering
  • CVLE(MCHE) 8160 Advanced Fluid Mechanics
  • GEOL(WASR) 8740 Hydrologic Flow and Transport Modeling
  • MARS 8030 Physical Oceanography
  • MARS 8100 Estuarine and Coastal Oceanography
  • MARS 8150 Ocean Waves
  • MARS 8510 Modeling Marine Sys
  • WASR 8200 Hillslope Hydrology
  • CHEM 8880 Nanomaterials: Engineering and Characterization


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