Research

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Sustainable Materials

Duke faculty are realizing the benefits of new materials through applications in agriculture, energy, transportation, construction and public infrastructure while evaluating possible toxic effects to human health and the environment of materials and material-additives, as well as the life-cycle dimensions of material production, use and disposal. Our interdisciplinary work brings together expertise on ecotoxicology, geomechanics, environmental engineering, risk assessment and materials science.

The $29 million Center for Environmental Implications of Nanotechnol­ogy (CIENT), an international NSF-funded consortium, has contributed for over a decade much about what we know about how industrial nanomaterials affect complex natural environments. With support from the EPA and European Union, CEINT’s shared database, the “Nanoinformatics Knowledge Commons,” has been adopted as an international standard for continued research.

Our interdisciplinary work brings together expertise on ecotoxicology, geomechanics, environmental engineering, risk assessment and materials science.

The $5 million NIH-funded Duke Environmental Analysis Laboratory uses advanced analytical methods and computational resources to identify and characterize unknown chemicals in environmental samples and evaluate their impacts on human health. It serves as a key resource to ongoing and new environmental health research studies nationwide.

In the Duke Superfund Research Center, engineers partner with environmental scientists and physicians to study environmental exposures and their consequences. Duke faculty are also finding ways to clean up contaminated sites using innovative approaches that incorporate nanotechnology and biological agents. Other research includes NSF- and DOE-funded research into the separation and purification of essential materials for modern technologies.


Centers and Laboratories


Faculty

Richard Di Giulio

Richard T. Di Giulio

Research Professor of Environmental Toxicology in the Division of Environmental Science and Policy

P. Ferguson

P. Lee Ferguson

Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Henri Gavin

Henri P. Gavin

Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Johann Guilleminot

Johann Guilleminot

Paul Ruffin Scarborough Associate Professor of Engineering

Claudia Gunsch

Claudia K. Gunsch

Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Heileen Hsu-Kim

Heileen Hsu-Kim

Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Akhenaton-Andrew Jones

Akhenaton-Andrew Dhafir Jones

Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Joel Meyer

Joel Meyer

Professor of Environmental Genomics in the Division of Environmental Sciences and Policy

Heather Stapleton

Heather M. Stapleton

Ronie-Richele Garcia-Johnson Distinguished Professor

Manolis Veveakis

Manolis Veveakis

Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Mark Wiesner

Mark Wiesner

James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering