LOCAL ORGANISING COMMITTEE

Currently, Buddhima Indraratna is a Distinguished Professor of Civil Engineering and the Director of Transport Research Centre, at University of Technology Sydney. Formerly, he was a Distinguished Professor and the Founding Director of Australian Research Council’s Training Centre for Rail Infrastructure (ARC ITTC-Rail) at the University of Wollongong.

He is also an Honorary Distinguished Professor at the Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand, Indian Institute of Technology, in Assam and Harbin Institute of Technology in Harbin, China.

Buddhima is a Civil Engineering graduate from Imperial College, London. Since his PhD at University of Alberta in Canada in 1987, his contributions to geotechnical and railway engineering have been acknowledged through numerous national and international awards, including 1st Ralph Proctor Lecture and 4th Louis Menard Lecture of the International Society of Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering. He also delivered the 2009 EH Davis Memorial Lecture of the Australian Geomechanics Society for contributions to Theory and Practice of Geomechanics and the 2022 Stephen Marich lecture on Advances in Railroad Engineering.

For his pioneering contributions, he was honoured with the 2009 Business and Higher Education award by the Australian Commonwealth, 2011 Engineers Australia Transport Medal and 2015 Australia-New Zealand Railway Technical Society’s Outstanding Individual Award. Other numerous international awards include Thomas Telford Premium by the Institution of Civil Engineers (UK), thrice the recipient of Robert Quigley commendation awards by the Canadian Geotechnical Society, and the Medal of Excellence for life-time contributions by the International Association of Computer Methods and Advances in Geomechanics.

Buddhima currently leads numerous projects worth over $1.5 million per year. He has been a consultant to various infrastructure organisations worldwide, and a former United Nations expert representing Australia. He has published nearly 900 papers including 12 books, over 450 journal papers, and more than 70 invited Keynote papers in all continents.

So far, he has supervised over 100 PhD and Master’s graduates and over 40 Postdoctoral Fellows. He is the Chair of the Ground Improvement Advisory Board of Inst. of Civil Engineers, UK, and the Chief Editor of the Journal of Ground Improvement.

Buddhima is a Fellow of the prestigious Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (FTSE), Fellow of the Institution of Engineers Australia (FIEAust), Fellow of American Society of Civil Engineers (FASCE), Fellow of Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (FAusIMM), and Fellow of the Geological Society of UK (FGS).

He is a Chartered Professional Engineer of Australia, United Kingdom, and Sri Lanka.