Civil engineering

Civil engineering is an umbrella field comprised of many related specialties. [Structural engineering]?, or structural design, is typically the largest, most important part of civil engineering as a practice. Structural engineers design bridges, buildings, dams etc. Supporting structural engineering is the field of geotechnical engineering. The importance of geotechnical engineering can hardly be overstated: buildings must be connected to the ground! Other parts of civil engineering include [transportation engineering]?, [environmental engineering]?, and [construction management]?. Civil engineering also supports a fair amount of intellectual activity with material science. The materials, of course, being the physical properties of concrete, steel and recently, polymers and ceramics with potential engineering application. Academically, a good civil engineering department will invariably shelter one or [applied mathematicians]? and/or computer scientists. Although the field is far from many exciting frontiers in mathematics and computer science, the problems of civil engineering can be mathematically or computationally grotesque. As such, there is a lot of opportunity for applying reasonably advanced techniques on what might be considered mundane problems (for example, a sliding block on a plane).