Research Overview

CEINT research draws on expertise in five key areas: 1) environmental toxicology and ecosystem biology, 2) nanomaterial transport, transformation, and fate in the environment, 3) biogeochemistry of manufactured and natural nanomaterials, and incidental airborne particulates, 4) nanomaterial chemistry and fabrication and, 5) environmental risk assessment and modeling.

CEINT research is grouped into three interconnected Themes:

CEINT research is supported in turn by work in three crosscutting Cores:

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CEINT Mesocosms


Located in the Duke Forest, the CEINT Mesocosm Facility is home to 32 tightly controlled and highly instrumented ecosystems (aka mesocosms). These mesocosms are areas where researchers add nanoparticles and study the resulting interactions and effects on plants, fish, bacteria and other elements within a contained systems. The mesocosms serve as a unifying resource for experiments across all of CEINT’s six thrusts.

CEINT members can request nanoparticle and mesocosm samples from the CEINT store.