Graduate Program

Harvard School of Engineering offers a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D) degree in Engineering Sciences - Environmental Science & Engineering, conferred through the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Confronting the many ways that human activities are affecting our planet is a fundamental challenge for society. The Environmental Science and Engineering (ESE) area is focused on this challenge, providing an extraordinary opportunity for students who wish to pursue graduate studies to address some of our most pressing environmental issues.

The ESE area features a highly accomplished faculty, state-of-the art laboratories, instrumentation and computation facilities, and a friendly, collaborative culture supports the education and training of our graduate students. Whether you are engaged in laboratory work, field observations, developing new instrumentation, theoretical studies, or modeling, you will find people in ESE who share your research interests and can further your intellectual development.  We have a very close association with the Ph.D. program in Earth and Planetary Sciences (EPS) (eps.harvard.edu), as most of our faculty are jointly appointed with EPS.  Students from both programs share a wide variety of activities, both social and academic.

Our graduate students come to Harvard with diverse undergraduate preparations.  Some have studied environmental fields such as meteorology oceanography, atmospheric chemistry, or biogeochemistry.  Many others have little prior training in environmental science, but enter with backgrounds in applied math, biology, chemistry, engineering or physics.

We encourage you to take the time to become familiar with our area. Please review our faculty members’ research pages to learn about specific opportunities and how they match with your interests. Please note that faculty members listed as “Affiliates" can serve on advisory committees, and can co-advise a Ph.D. student with another ESE faculty member, but cannot serve as the primary research advisor.