Students may explore their own areas of interest or focus on one of five current areas of research and education:

• geotechnical engineering
• structural engineering
• transportation engineering
• civil engineering materials
• water resource engineering

The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering maintains six state-of-the-art facilities for conducting research, including world-class petrography laboratories for characterizing materials. Other laboratories support structural testing, PCC concrete mixing and testing, asphalt testing, binder characterization, complex data visualization, and computational research. Through Benedict Laboratory, the largest lab on campus, Michigan Tech is one of a select few institutions that can test and evaluate ultra-high performance concrete.

Projects include the use of fly ash as a partial replacement for portland cement concrete; use of cement kiln dust as a subbase stabilizer in roads; use of ultrahigh performance concrete for stronger and more efficient structures, including bridges; warm-mix asphalt processes; effects of anti-icing chemicals on pavements; rapid construction of decked prestressed concrete bridge beams; information visualization and modeling of human-resource interactions to aid complex decision-making; load-sharing and system factors for light-frame timber construction; and the impact of logging trucks on traffic safety.