The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering maintains laboratories designed to perform modern research in many diverse fields.

In the field of environmental engineering, faculty maintain a wide array of laboratories, specialized instruments, and computers necessary to conduct nationally-competitive research. Analytical instruments available within the department include gas chromatographs, HPLCs, spectrophotometers, ion chromoatographs, AA, particle size analyzers, centrifuges, respirometers, specialty gas analyzers, etc. Specialized facilities, housed in six separate laboratories, also include ultra-cold freezers, media preparation facilities, autoclaves, constant temperature rooms, plant-growth chambers, and specialized facilities for characterization of microbial populations using molecular techniques. Several large facilities with technical help and state-of-art instrumentation facilitate research at LSU and include those for NMR analysis, mass spectrometry (Kratos high-resolution, Finnigen tandem, and Bio-Ion Plasma Desorption time-of-flight mass spectrometers), automated DNA sequencing, and confocal, light and electron microscopy (in the Socolofsky Microscopy Center) housed in the College of Basic Sciences.

Students and faculty also have access to many of the research facilities of the Louisiana Agricultural Experiment Station and Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium (LUMCON) facility which provides support for marine/estuarine research. Environmental engineering faculty collaborate with engineers and scientists throughout the LSU campus including the Departments of Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Oceanography and Coastal Studies as well as universities and research centers throughout the nation and world.

Research in the Structures Group covers a wide range of topics – from hurricane and wind engineering to FRP composite and smart materials/systems to traditional prestressed concrete structures to numerical methods and reliability analyses. Research facility includes test frames, MTS test machines, bridge field test system, long-term bridge monitoring system, cable vibration and vibration control system, fiber optic sensor and interrogating system, acoustic emission and ultrasound non-destructive evaluation systems, wind tunnels, 6-degree of freedom shake table, etc.