Welcome
The Environmental Science and Engineering (ESE) program reaches across traditional disciplinary boundaries in its aim to provide a comprehensive understanding of our complex environment and offer efficient and effective engineering solutions to environmental problems. Students in ESE receive a broad education and carry out research addressing some of the grand science and engineering challenges of our times:
- How has Earth's climate varied in the past and how will it change in the future?
- How does pollution affect air quality locally and far from its sources, and how does it affect cloud cover and climate change?
- How do microorganisms drive nutrient cycles in oceans and on land, and how can they be used to produce biofuels or remediate toxic waste?
By uniting scientists and engineers from a variety of disciplines and focusing on fundamental questions with long reach, the ESE program strives to have an outsize influence on the field.
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Graduate students celebrate the recovery of fossil Isidid coral from the ocean floor, which will be used to infer ocean conditions in the distant past.
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Collecting microorganisms from the extreme ecosystems of Yellowstone National Park -
Professor Andrew Thompson and collaborators preparing to deploy a fleet of ocean surface drifters to track ocean currents in the Southern Ocean. -
Cumulonimbus clouds over North America. Clouds modulate atmospheric dynamics through latent heat release in phase changes of water and through their radiative effects. ESE scientists study the mechanisms involved and how they may change with the climate. (Photo Credit: NASA) -
Recovery of a CTD sensor at sea. The CTD measures conductivity (to determine salinity), temperature, and depth in the water column. -
Graduate student Anne Dekas analyzing samples in a laboratory aboard R/V Atlantis off the Oregon coast. -
The Alvin submersible returns from a dive and is recovered with the help of a swimmer. -
Graduate Student Gretchen Keppel-Aleks visiting the Caltech solar FTS instrument in Park Falls Wisconsin. These measurements are providing a new view into carbon dioxide release into — and uptake from — the atmosphere. The new Linde+Robinson Laboratory features such an instrument using sunlight from the solar tracking mirror system located on the roof. -
Graduate Student John Crounse operates the Caltech CIMS instrument on NASA's DC8 aircraft over Costa Rica. Measurements of many chemicals in the atmosphere probe the oxidation of compounds emitted from the biosphere. -
Postdoctoral research fellow Dr. Melinda Beaver monitors atmospheric chemistry over a Sierra Nevada forest using mass spectrometers built at Caltech. -
Smoke over North America. (Photo Credit: NASA) -
Navy Twin Otter atmospheric research aircraft operated by Professors Seinfeld and Flagan.
