Civil Engineering teaches you about the effective planning, design and construction of the built environment. This includes the working and living spaces people depend on, as well as critical infrastructure such as motorways, bridges, and water supply networks. The many and varied elective courses available within Civil Engineering encourage you to find a path that resonates with your own interests.

This specialisation gives you the chance to see how you can shape the world we live in. For example in topics with an environmental focus, you will learn how to design, develop and evaluate structures, equipment and systems to provide practical solutions to problems caused by increasing consumption and waste.

Some of the topics you can study within Civil Engineering include:

• Environmental Engineering
• Transportation Engineering
• Water Engineering
• Construction Management
• Structural Engineering
• Geotechnical Engineering

Pursuing a PhD at the University of Auckland gives you access to a high-calibre research community – you may have the opportunity to publish papers, attend international conferences and develop your networks in academia and industry.

We welcome research proposals in topics relating to our key areas, including:

• Earthquake engineering, which covers broad research areas such as seismic assessments, materials, and community resilience
• Geotechnical engineering, including soil behaviour modelling, structural foundation systems, dynamic properties of soils, and liquefaction
• Resilience, with a variety of broad topics such as building and transportation infrastructure, organisational management and communities, and disaster reduction
• Structural engineering, on areas such as the development of materials and innovative new solutions
• Transportation, including traffic operations, road safety and skid resistance, network modelling and public transport, and Electric Vehicles
• Water and environmental engineering, focusing on areas such as hydraulic engineering, flow structures, sustainability, waste management, resource recovery