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Sybil Derrible
French American Engineer, Educator, Author From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Sybil Derrible (born 1983) is a French American engineer, educator, and author.[1][2] He specializes in urban engineering, infrastructure sustainability, and system resilience.[1] He is Director of the Complex and Sustainable Urban Networks (CSUN) Laboratory[3] and Professor in the Department of Civil, Materials, and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois Chicago.[1]
He authored the textbook Urban Engineering for Sustainability published by MIT Press in 2019[4] and the popular science book The Infrastructure Book: How Cities Work and Power Our Lives published by Prometheus Books in 2025.[5]
He is Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)[6] and Lead Author for the energy chapter of UNEP’s Seventh Global Environmental Outlook.[7]
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Personal life and education
Derrible was born and raised in Saint Pierre, part of the France-owned archipelago of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, in Northern America.[1] He credits his background, growing up on a small archipelago, for his system-of-systems, multi-infrastructure research focus.[2]
Derrible received his undergraduate and M.Eng. degree in mechanical engineering from Imperial College London in 2006.[1] While at Imperial College London, he spent a year at the École Centrale of Lyon to study industrial engineering as part of the Erasmus program.[2] He received his Ph.D. in civil engineering from the University of Toronto in 2010.[1] He was Visiting Research Fellow at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology[8] in Singapore before joining the University of Illinois Chicago in 2012.[2]
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Career
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Derrible joined the University of Illinois Chicago in 2012 as Assistant Professor. He received tenure and became Associate Professor in 2017. He was promoted to Professor in 2023.[9] His main appointment is in the Department of Civil, Materials, and Environmental Engineering.[1] He also holds a joint appointment at the Institute of Environmental Science and Policy[10] and a courtesy appointment in the Department of Computer Science.[11]
In 2019, Derrible spent six months in Vietnam during a sabbatical and was Visiting Professor at the University of Transport Technology[12] in Hanoi.[2]
Derrible has authored/co-authored over one hundred scientific articles.[13] He studies infrastructure systems as complex, interdependent, and interrelated, promoting principles of livability, sustainability, and resilience.[1] His work has focused on transport, water, wastewater, electricity, natural gas, solid waste, and telecommunication infrastructure.[13] His main technical approach includes urban metabolism, artificial intelligence, and complexity science.[13]
Derrible was elected Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) in 2025.[6] He serves as an editor for ASCE’s Journal of Infrastructure Systems,[14] Nature’s Scientific Reports,[15] and Elsevier’s Cleaner Production Letters.[16] Since 2023, he has been Chair of the Standing Committee AMR10 Critical Transportation Infrastructure Protection of the Transportation Research Board.[17] He was Chair of the Sustainable Urban Systems (SUS) section of the International Society for Industrial Ecology from 2017 to 2020.[1]
In addition to his research work, Derrible authored several non-fiction and fiction works to communicate how civil infrastructure works and its role in society.[18]
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Books
- Derrible, S., 2025, The Infrastructure Book: How Cities Work and Power our Lives, Prometheus Books, The Globe Pequot Publishing Group. Essex, CT, 260 pages
- Derrible, S., & Chester, M., (Eds) 2020, Urban Infrastructure: Reflections for 2100, Independently published, 211 pages
- Derrible, S., 2019, Urban Engineering for Sustainability, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 656 pages
Selected Awards and Honors
- Recognized in top 2% researcher in field for career and single-year impact since 2019[19]
- Elected Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) in 2025[6]
- Invited participant (nominated and selected) to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE)’s Grainger Foundation Frontiers of Engineering Symposium in 2023[20]
- Received the Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) in 2023
- Received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2016[1]
- Received a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Post-Doctoral Fellowship in 2011[1]
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References
External websites
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