Environmental Science and Engineering

Entry requirements

Students with bachelor’s degrees in the natural sciences, mathematics, or engineering are invited to apply for admission.

Through the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, prospective students apply for doctoral study at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). These programs lie at the interfaces of engineering, the applied sciences (from biology to physics), and technology.

When applying, select “Engineering and Applied Sciences” as your program choice and your degree and area of interest in the Area of Study menu. You must complete the Supplemental SEAS Application Form as part of the online application process. Please read the form carefully and indicate your specific interests only in the area to which you are applying.

Months of entry

August

Course content

Environmental science and engineering is a field within the Engineering Sciences area of study at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Prospective students apply through the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (Harvard Griffin GSAS). In the online application, select “Engineering and Applied Sciences” as your program choice and select "PhD Engineering Sciences: Environmental Science and Engineering" in the area of study menu.

Environmental science and engineering is an interdisciplinary program with the common goal of understanding, predicting, and responding to human-induced environmental change. You will learn that addressing environmental issues requires perspectives from a diverse set of scientific disciplines, including atmospheric physics and chemistry, oceanography, glaciology, hydrology, geophysics, ecology, and biogeochemistry.

Your research will be strongly interdisciplinary, with many connections to Earth and Planetary Sciences and other science and policy programs at Harvard. You will learn to think about environmental processes in an integrated fashion, preparing you to manage the environmental challenges we face.

Examples of projects current and past students have worked on include building bio-inspired robotics and developing personalized exosuits to assist in real-world walking.

Graduates of the program have gone on to a range of careers in organizations like the World Bank, the Earth System Research Laboratory at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and Tesla. Others have positions in academia at Georgia Tech, Oregon State University, and University of Rochester.

Fees and funding

5 years’ funding is guaranteed to all Harvard GSAS PhD students.

Applicants who are British citizens, normally resident in the UK and who are, or will be, graduates of a British university, are welcome to submit an additional application for a Kennedy Scholarship and/or a Frank Knox Fellowship.

An application for either award is separate from and totally independent of an application to a particular programme. Frank Knox Fellowship funding is advantageous in the taught-master phase of a doctorate. Both awards offer significant social and networking benefits.