School of Engineering and Digital Sciences
School of Engineering and Digital Sciences
School of Engineering and Digital Sciences
The Master of Science in Civil & Environmental Engineering (MSc-CEE) degree program is a specialized degree program offered by School of Engineering and Digital Sciences at Nazarbayev University (NU). Students are required to complete 120 ECTS credits, in 4 semesters, which satisfies requirements stipulated by the Bologna Process and the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) for Master’s Degrees. The program is focusing on research and has been designed to provide advanced skills and a detailed knowledge base at the graduate level for individuals working in academia, industry, or research settings in Kazakhstan or throughout the world.
The MSc-CEE provides a comprehensive technologic and scientific preparation for engineers in 4 (four) key areas of Civil & Environmental Engineering:
1) Structural Engineering and Materials;
2) Geotechnical Engineering;
3) Environmental Engineering; and
4) Construction Management,
in perfect alignment with today ́s technological challenges. A set of mandatory core courses guarantees competence in advanced mathematics, the 4 (four) key areas of the program, classic and novel research methods and effective oral and written communication in the science and technology domain.
By delivering an MSc at an international standard level, we are offering our master’s students future opportunities in terms of PhD and positions in research centers, locally or abroad.
Aims and Objectives
The mission of the School of Engineering and Digital Sciences at Nazarbayev University is to contribute to the development of Kazakhstan in terms of:
- Educating students with engineering expertise to lead organizations and provide innovative solutions for complex technical issues of enterprises.
- Conducting innovative and pioneering basics of applied research that evolve the body of knowledge in Engineering through interdisciplinary collaboration with other schools and research centers at Nazarbayev University and leading universities worldwide.
- Advancing the professional development in engineering through our service to the professional community and providing lifelong learning opportunities for practitioners.
The M.Sc. (CEE) program aims to reflect the mission of the School of Engineering and Digital Sciences and accomplishes this by pursuing the following objectives:
1) Extend the knowledge and skills in advanced civil and environmental engineering analysis and design, particularly in using latest modelling and analysis techniques;
2) Develop solutions to civil and environmental engineering problems using in-depth knowledge and innovative ideas and techniques necessary for specialist engineers;
3) Develop skills to conduct high quality research in the field of civil and environmental engineering;
4) Provide awareness of the challenges in the profession and integrate engineering and non engineering topics for leading organizations.
Total Number of Credits: 120 ECTS
Year 1: Fall Semester (Semester 1)
Year 1: Spring Semester (Semester 2)
Year 2: Fall Semester (Semester 3)
Year 2: Spring Semester (Semester 4)
Program Core Courses
This course addresses the primary need for graduate students to undertake formal training that will help them in understanding how to conduct their research. The course will develop student’s understanding of research plan and engender skills enhancement for reading, interpreting, writing, and presenting key ideas. The course will also instill an understanding of a variety of research methods and ethics and implement appropriate strategies in lecture and workshop settings.
This graduate level course combines the application of rhetorical analysis to stylistic conventions of writing in engineering, with a focus on clarity, conciseness, and coherence. Students will employ process writing to produce genre specific writing familiar to Engineers, including research reports scientific papers designed for specific audiences. This course also trains students to deliver effective and appealing professional and scientific presentations, with attention to best practices in the use of technical English and oral communication.
This course reviews and deepens the advanced analytical and numerical methods to solve ODEs and PDEs. The whole course will be supported by a mathematical software package capable to perform symbolical calculations. The module is designed for graduate students to cover their research needs concerning mathematical modeling via analytical, semi-analytical or numerical techniques.
This course enables students to gain and apply basic research knowledge and skills to select their research projects in Civil and Environmental Engineering by attending a series of expert presentations and by assessing, preparing and presenting his or her own preliminary research ideas. The course develops the following knowledge and skills:
1. Identifying the area of research interest;
2. Surveying of state of the art for the area of interest;
3. Identifying the research topic and associated issues;
4. Understanding of the social, cultural, global, and environmental issues associated with chosen
research topic;
5. Writing a research paper based on the literature survey under the supervision of a faculty mem-
ber;
6. Presentation of a seminar and being assessed by a panel.
1. Identifying the area of research interest;
2. Surveying of state of the art for the area of interest;
3. Identifying the research topic and associated issues;
4. Understanding of the social, cultural, global, and environmental issues associated with chosen
research topic;
5. Writing a research paper based on the literature survey under the supervision of a faculty mem-
ber;
6. Presentation of a seminar and being assessed by a panel.
This course intends to give students the opportunity to develop the research proposal. The course de-
velops the following knowledge and skills:
1. Preparation of a thorough and comprehensive literature review to support the research proposal;
2. Formulation of the research hypothesis;
3. Developing and justifying the methods to conduct the research.
velops the following knowledge and skills:
1. Preparation of a thorough and comprehensive literature review to support the research proposal;
2. Formulation of the research hypothesis;
3. Developing and justifying the methods to conduct the research.
This course intends to give students the opportunity to fully implement the research proposal and bring it to a conclusion. The course develops the following knowledge and skills:
1. Planning and conducting, independently, research at an advanced level;
2. Critically analyzing research results;
3. Effectively presenting their results to a wide audience;
4. Effectively compiling their results in the form of an authoritative thesis.
1. Planning and conducting, independently, research at an advanced level;
2. Critically analyzing research results;
3. Effectively presenting their results to a wide audience;
4. Effectively compiling their results in the form of an authoritative thesis.
This course will provide students detailed theoretical backgrounds, formulations and implementations of the Finite Element Method and its application to solid and fluid mechanics. The specific topics include: (1) linear algebra; (2) one-dimensional element formulations; (3) two-dimensional beam element formulations; (4) two-dimensional plate element formulations; (5) plasticity and time integration in finite element methods; and (6) Application of solid and fluid mechanics.
This course is designed to provide a theoretical framework for the analysis of deformation and failure of soils with application to several practical problems. These include elasticity for linear deformation, plasticity models (including critical state model) for non-linear deformation and limit equilibrium analyses for important geotechnical problems.
This course will provide graduate students advanced knowledge of basic environmental chemical reactions on Acid/Base reactions, Complex reactions, Precipitation & Dissolutions, Redox Reactions, Solid Solution Interface Reactions to estimate and evaluate the fate of potential chemical species in engineered and natural environmental systems.
This comprehensive course is designed to provide students with a detailed understanding of the concepts and techniques of sustainable construction, which is a crucial part of the broader term of sustain able development. The course begins by developing basic knowledge about life cycle concepts for sustainable construction methods, with a particular focus on green building planning, basic design, delivery systems, and construction and operations. Students will also learn about the importance of green building assessment systems, which are used to measure the environmental performance of buildings and ensure they meet sustainability targets. Students will also learn about advanced building technologies for sustainability, including energy-efficient building systems, water conservation technologies, and renewable energy sources.
Overall, this course provides a comprehensive overview of sustainable construction, equipping students with the knowledge and skills needed to design, plan, and implement sustainable building projects that are environmentally responsible, economically viable, and socially beneficial.
Overall, this course provides a comprehensive overview of sustainable construction, equipping students with the knowledge and skills needed to design, plan, and implement sustainable building projects that are environmentally responsible, economically viable, and socially beneficial.
Program Elective Courses
This course will provide graduate students with an understanding of the vibration behavior and dynamic response of structural systems to periodic and arbitrary loadings; and with an introduction to earthquake engineering. The specific topics include: (1) single degree of freedom (DOF) system: free vibration, periodic loading, arbitrary loading and numerical methods; (2) multi-degree of freedom: generalized DOF, modal analysis, mode decomposition, modal superposition methods; (3) earthquake engineering: introduction of earthquakes, elastic response spectrum, inelastic response spectrum, earthquake response of multi-story buildings.
This module introduces the relationships between the microstructure and the macro properties and characteristics of portland cement concrete (PCC) systems; a thorough understanding of the early-age, mechanical property development, and durability characteristics of Portland cement-based systems. The course will also introduce advances in concrete technology with focus on special types of concrete.
This module introduces methods to perform structural evaluation and determine remaining service life of structures. Different strengthening techniques would also be introduced to carry out rehabilitation of structures.
This course will provide graduate students advanced knowledge on the chemical (Neutralization, Precipitation, S/S, Adsorption, etc.), physical (particle treatment, gas transfer, and membrane processes), and biological processes to treat the contaminants in engineered environmental systems and to apply to the development of novel treatment processes.
This course covers the principles of contaminated site management. It provides an overview for the management basics of contaminated sites, site characterization methods, and technology selection and application for treatment purposes based on site and contaminant properties. It covers in detail various soil treatment technologies and discusses their suitability of application for different cases. Some discussion will focus on case studies. The course reviews in detail physical, chemical, and biological treatment of contaminated soils; and, the content is tailored based on existing national priorities and cases.
The course is intended to give advanced level of knowledge and real life applications of methods for environmental modelling and its purposes. The course is also intended to give fundamental knowledge and experience in model construction and evaluation. Students will also practice their skills in communicating environmental modelling. The application examples illustrate air, water, and soil quality issues, but also touch upon modelling of global, regional and local pollution behaviors and ecosystem modelling. Data-analysis problems will use publicly available datasets so that students learn what parameters in environmental science are measured and monitored and how to access and use these data.
This course introduces assumptions and principles and understand how various numerical simulation methods affect the solution of interest in geotechnical engineering. This module investigates the behavior of concrete subjected to internal and external agents. Different repair materials, protective systems and strengthening techniques would also be introduced to carry out concrete repair and maintenance.
This course is concerned with the study of aspects of geotechnical engineering related to earthquakes and other dynamic effects. In this course, students will study how soil responds to dynamic loading and how the soil modifies the transmission of the travelling ground motion.
This course covers site investigation, retaining structures and some types of foundation. The analysis, design and methods of construction will be introduced.
This course will introduce students with the emerging technology of Building Information Modeling (BIM). The course will cover the history of BIM, the transition from 2D to BIM, the BIM concept and the future trends of BIM. Students will know about the purpose of the model, the hardware and software requirements and computer modeling techniques. The course will help students better visualize the construction projects, improve external and internal collaboration needed on the project and provide better project coordination. Besides the role of BIM for a sustainable design will be illustrated along with the applications of BIM for computer aided manufacturing in construction and interactive document delivery.
This course introduces the fundamental principles of green building, including current standards and regional factors. Major emphasis is placed on the five components of green buildings: energy, water, sustainable sites, materials and resources, and indoor environmental quality. The lectures present key parts of green buildings and provide a basis for further group project activities. Workshops, where students produce and generate ideas, focus and discuss green building projects' specific aspects. In the evaluation practices, existing buildings are analyzed and assessed by following a certification method (e.g., LEED, BREEAM, GreenStar, GSAS etc.). The various concepts, the definitions, and the methodologies presented in lectures are:
-Green buildings, sustainable buildings, and passive houses
-Environmental certification methods for new and existing buildings (e.g., LEED, BREEAM, WELL, Green Building, Green Star, etc.)
-The construction process and project management
-Green building design and assessment methods
MCEE 711, Soil Improvement and Stabilization
This course will cover the need for ground improvement and stabilization and brief description of methods used. This course will include principles of the soil improvement/stabilization (e.g., physico-chemical, mechanical/geosynthetic) method, selected lectures on braced excavations, dewatering, grouting, stone columns, vertical and horizontal drains, vacuum pumping, deep compaction, vibro floatation, lime/cement stabilization, reinforced earth and soil nailing.
-Green buildings, sustainable buildings, and passive houses
-Environmental certification methods for new and existing buildings (e.g., LEED, BREEAM, WELL, Green Building, Green Star, etc.)
-The construction process and project management
-Green building design and assessment methods
MCEE 711, Soil Improvement and Stabilization
This course will cover the need for ground improvement and stabilization and brief description of methods used. This course will include principles of the soil improvement/stabilization (e.g., physico-chemical, mechanical/geosynthetic) method, selected lectures on braced excavations, dewatering, grouting, stone columns, vertical and horizontal drains, vacuum pumping, deep compaction, vibro floatation, lime/cement stabilization, reinforced earth and soil nailing.
This course is designed to develop student’s knowledge further and enable them to plan, design, and analyze new and existing pavements. This course addresses the theory and practice in the fundamentals of pavement design and rehabilitation strategy such as pavement performance, structural design of pavement layers, types of materials used in pavement layers, characterization of pavement layer materials. Concepts of pavement management and pavement rehabilitation strategy will be introduced. Pavement design and evaluation computational tools will be introduced and applied.
The objective of this course is to prepare students for advanced-level structural engineering employment by providing them with abilities to design and analyze reinforced concrete structures. This course provides students with advanced techniques, such as section analysis, yield line theory, 2nd order analysis, and Bresler’s reciprocal theory, for analysis and design of reinforced concrete structural members under the complicate loading conditions such as torsion, bi-axial bending, and buckling. The mechanics underlying the code design procedures are evaluated as well as their application to practical design problems.
This course will provide graduate students background understanding on the advanced chemical, physical, and physico-chemical unit processes to treat contaminated surface and groundwater from their water sources and to apply them to the development of novel advanced wastewater treatment systems.
The purpose of this course is to introduce current theoretical and practical perspectives of project management. The course consists of four parts: The first part will study basic project management concepts and definitions (perceptions of investments, projects, programs and business processes; basic project management sub-processes and the project handbook). The second part will deal with project management methods for project start (scope, context, organization, WBS, responsibility matrix, etc.), project co-ordination, project controlling, management of project crises & risks and project close-down. The third part will discuss social competences required in managing projects, such as team building, intervention methods, dealing with diversity & emotions and conflict management. Finally, the fourth part will deal with issues related to project-oriented organizations, such as required permanent organization structures and processes. Examples and case studies will be used through-out the course.
This course aims to acquaint students with the principles of unsaturated soil mechanics and its application to engineering practice under the effect of climatic conditions, such as: slope stability, retaining wall design, foundation design, soil-structure interaction. This course will include (1) shear strength and hydraulic properties of unsaturated soil; (2) rainfall-induced slope failure; (3) field instrumentation for assessment of unsaturated soil behavior and (4) numerical analyses for modelling geotechnical engineering problem incorporating unsaturated soil properties.
This course aims to acquaint students with the theories and practical aspects of computational modeling and instrumentation for application in geotechnical engineering with respect to slope stability, seepage analysis, deep excavation, and foundation. This course includes (1) geotechnical information modeling; (2) seepage-deformation-stability analyses; (3) field instrumentation for assessment of stability, deformation, and water flow; (4) application of unsaturated soil mechanics on computational modeling and instrumentation in solving geotechnical problems.
Engineering Management is the integration of human relations, planning and control concepts, systems analysis and design, and principles of management oriented toward engineering functions within an organization; organizational design and administration as they impact along the product life cycle, i.e., research, design, development, production and use. Engineering Economy is concerned with fundamental concepts and advanced techniques of engineering economic analysis; evaluation of alternative capital investments considering income taxes, depreciation and inflation; discounted cash flow analysis of competing projects, break-even analysis and determination of rate of return on investment, Risk and uncertainty in engineering analysis. This course will help students to explore strategies, models, and practices for leading and managing engineering organizations in a context directly relevant to them. They will engage in self-reflection about their styles, beliefs, and past experiences with leadership and management, and emerge with an insightful understanding of their personal approach as a professional. Besides, students will learn to improve their grasp of the "big picture" and how daily decisions affect the financial performance of an organization. They will learn principles and practices of interpreting financial information and performing engineering-related economic analyses. This course focuses on current practices, using economic information for decision-making and control. Students will practice applying these techniques to applications in real firms.
This module is going to develop knowledge about statistics and probability which is very important for experimental research and results analysis. It will cover statistical methods and probability of events as well as planning of experiments.
The ever-increasing demand of power, heating and cooling associated to global population and economic growth, parallel to anthropogenic global warming and fast depletion of fossil fuels, creates an imperative need to incorporate a much larger share of clean and renewable energy. The Renewable Energy Systems course introduces graduate students to the principles of energy conversion, storage, technologies, and economy associated to the use of renewable energy sources.
The course presents a global overview of renewable energy sources with a focus on solar and wind energy sources, covering various aspects of the modeling, design and analysis of solar power and heating, and on-shore/off-shore wind power systems, including their economic and environmental impact analyses.
The course presents a global overview of renewable energy sources with a focus on solar and wind energy sources, covering various aspects of the modeling, design and analysis of solar power and heating, and on-shore/off-shore wind power systems, including their economic and environmental impact analyses.
The whole world is campaigning for sustainable living. Energy used by the built environment is a major factor. As such, energy efficient and low energy building should be designed and built in accordance with its location and functionality and be operated to its requirements and maintained adequately.