Civil Engineering at Shiv Nadar University aims to be a global leader in developing engineering solutions to societal-scale challenges. The practice of civil engineering is in transition, but traditional civil engineering programs in India have been slow to adapt, providing a window for the civil engineering program at SNU to create a distinct identity.

India’s 12th Five-Year Plan lays down the challenge for civil engineering in India:

""As urban population and incomes increase, demand for every key service such as water, transportation, sewage treatment, low income housing will increase five- to sevenfold in cities of every size and type. And if India continues on its current path, urban infrastructure will fall woefully short of what is necessary to sustain prosperous cities.""

The Department of Civil Engineering has taken this to heart and is working to address these challenges – both through wide-ranging research in fields as varied as geographic information systems, climate studies, infrastructure policy, complex networks, disaster management, energy studies, biomaterials, nanotechnology, and communications and information technology, as well as through a flexible curriculum which does not limit students at any level to the traditional boundaries of the discipline of civil engineering.

Members of the Civil Engineering faculty have a range of research and teaching interests which include and extend beyond traditional civil engineering to overlap with chemical, mechanical, and materials engineering, as well as with the geological, biological, mathematical, and computer sciences.

The curriculum at both the undergraduate and Master's level is designed to produce high quality professionals who can meet industry requirements, including in leading research and development (R & D) organizations and academic institutions. Keeping in mind the breadth of the Civil Engineering domain, the academic programs are focused towards building analytical capabilities and project-based learning to enable students to understand and resolve a wide variety of practical problems. Our hope is that we will equip students with a strong skill set such that they not only become outstanding professional civil engineers, but also learn to engage with social and management sciences to consider the larger social, economic, and environmental ramifications of civil works.