The major areas of research within the OCICE are listed below. For detailed descriptions of research projects and opportunities for students to join research groups, visit the web site of individual research groups or researchers. All students are invited to contact the faculty members in the Institute to discuss their research interests and, when possible, to visit the various departments.
The National Capital Region is home to some of Canada's most talented engineers and scientists, and to some of the best scientific and engineering laboratories and libraries in the world. The Institute has actively capitalized on its unique location. It has established close cooperation with many of the agencies of the Federal Government, including the National Research Council of Canada, Public Works and Government Services Canada, Transport Canada, Natural Resources Canada, Environment Canada, National Capital Commission, and Forintek etc. Cooperation and resources sharing take place in several different forms.
Some distinguished engineers and researchers from the agencies mentioned above have been appointed as adjunct professors and/or session lecturers. In those capacities, they offer graduate courses and/or supervise graduate students for their thesis projects. They also serve as examiners on thesis examination boards and members of Ph.D. advisory boards. In each of these roles, they bring a different, but highly relevant, perspective to graduate studies and research at the Institute.
Members of the Institute and their graduate students pursue joint research projects of mutual interest with the engineers and scientists of the cooperating agencies. This gives them the opportunity to gain access to highly specialized and advanced facilities and equipment of the Federal Government laboratories and the concomitant expertise within them. Easy access to the scientific libraries of the Federal Government in Ottawa, especially the well-known CISTI, makes the task of research and information collection much easier.
The Ottawa-Carleton Institute for Civil Engineering has established a number of organized research units to foster cooperative research among faculty within the Institute and with other researchers outside the Institute. Although such centres may also exist in other universities, the high degree of participation in the activities of many of the Institute's centres and the close cooperation among faculty members with diverse fields of specialization can be characterized as unique. The centres serve two purposes: a) Pooling and coordinating the intellectual and physical resources of faculty members and their graduate students for collective and cooperative application to practical engineering problems of a multi-facetted nature; and b) Attracting research sponsorship from government agencies and industry for research projects. Currently, the following centres are active within the Institute.