THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN &
J.J. PICKLE RESEARCH CAMPUS
The EWRE Laboratory facilities, housed on the main campus and at J.J. Pickle Research Campus, are well-equipped for performing both basic and applied state-of-the-art research in virtually all areas of environmental and water resources engineering
ECJ - Ernest Cockrell, Jr. Hall
The on-campus laboratories and offices of EWRE cover 20,000 square feet on three floors of Ernest Cockrell, Jr. Hall. Much of the environmental engineering research is conducted on campus in laboratories designed for physical, chemical and biological analyses, and for research on water, wastewater and hazardous waste treatment processes. Facilities include one clean room for metal or particulate analysis, four laboratories with temperature and humidity control for special projects and numerous hoods for the safe handling of hazardous chemicals. The laboratories are equipped with a broad array of modern analytical instruments that can measure virtually any type of pollutant. Special equipment also may be built in the Civil Engineering machine shop. Additional analytical equipment such as x-ray fluorescence, NMR, scanning electron microscopy, and nuclear activation analysis instruments is available in other departments on the main campus.
CRWR - Center for Research in Water Resources
The Center for Research in Water Resources (CRWR) is located at J.J. Pickle Research Campus approximately 9 miles from the main campus. (The University operates a regular, free shuttle bus between the main campus and the Pickle Research Campus.) CRWR is a facility supporting computational and experimental research in water resources. The focal points of the computational research are the application of geographic information systems in water resources, the numerical simulation of pollutants in soil and groundwater systems, and the assembly and synthesis of historical water quantity and quality information. The focal points of the experimental research are scaled laboratory models of water flow in rivers and in piped systems, models of innovative wastewater treatment facilities, and field monitoring of water quality in streams and highway runoff. The CRWR Computer Lab consists of high-end desktop workstations running Windows XP and Linux connected to a high speed network. Centralized Windows 2003 servers support file and print services, data storage, backup, e-mail, and web services. The most recent version of licensed ArcGIS software is installed on all lab machines. The adjacent Hydraulics and Environmental Laboratory contains instrumentation and data acquisition systems necessary to conduct major laboratory and field studies. Permanent features of the 24,000-square-foot facility include a 200-foot outdoor flume with adjustable slope and a 75-foot tilting, glass-walled flume. Other facilities include a model of a meandering river channel to study hydraulics and pollutant transport, a side weir to study diversion of flood flows, a tilting channel to study the hydraulics of street and gutter flows on roadways, and a rectangular open channel which is 130 ft long and 5 ft wide with a flow of 23 cfs.
CEER - Center for Energy and Environmental Resources
The Air Resources Engineering Program maintains approximately 5,000 square feet of laboratory space in five newly-renovated laboratories at the Center for Energy and Environmental Resources (CEER), previously the Center for Energy Studies. These laboratories are equipped for doing laboratory-scale analysis of biological air filtration systems and other air pollution control devices. The laboratories also include facilities for studying outdoor sources of volatile organic compounds and indoor sources and sinks of volatile chemicals. A wide range of instrumentation is also available for field monitoring in both indoor and outdoor environments.
Computing Facilities
Computation Hydrodynamic Laboratory
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The Computational Hydrodynamics Laboratory has one Compaq XP 1000 Workstation, one DEC Personal Workstation 500 au, one Compaq AlphaServer DS20E Server, two Sun Blade 2000 workstations, one 16 node cluster with each node supporting two AMD Opteron processors, one printer, one PC and one Mac. These computers provide the necessary platform for solving non-linear flow problems about complex geometries (involving cavities or free-surfaces) and for performing advanced propeller blade design using non-linear optimization techniques.
Learning Resource Center
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- Over 100 Dell workstations with flat panel displays, running windows XP
- Five multimedia PCs with HP ScanJet flatbed scanners complete with document feeders
- Three DVD-RW drives
- One Dell multimedia projector with a Dell Latitude laptop available for checkout
- Wide variety of current software
- Panorama of printing capabilities
In addition, a Cal Comp plotter, digitizer and other peripheral devices are available to support CAD/CAE.
Texas Advanced Computing Center
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High-powered resources are available at the Texas Advanced Computing Center.
Richard W. Mckinney Engineering Library
- contains more than 120,000 volumes
- subscribes to over 1,800 periodicals
- has over 500,000 technical reports on microfiche.
Conveniently located in Cockrell Hall, this library is a state-of-the-art information resource with highly trained personnel ready to help you make use of specialized electronic sources and databases such as pollution abstracts and water resources abstracts.
Other Pertinent Organizations
United States Geological Survey (USGS)District office in Austin
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality
Regulates drinking water plants, wastewater discharges, municipal solid waste, hazardous waste disposal, and air emissions in Texas.
Texas Water Development Board Oversees development of water resources in Texas.
City of Austin Maintains a water and wastewater research facility at its Center for Environmental Research, located 18 miles from campus.
Lower Colorado River Authority Operates a series of flood-control and water-supply reservoirs along the Colorado River near Austin.
The Engineering Career Assistance Center (ECAC)
The ECAC provides a comprehensive on-campus recruiting and interviewing program to assist students in finding suitable employment upon graduation. ECAC also assists students with resume construction, cover letter writing, and job search preparation and implementation. EWRE faculty members also play an active role in assisting students to find employment through their numerous professional contacts across the country.
