Buddhima Indraratna AM is a Sri Lankan-born Australian civil engineer and academic specializing in geotechnical engineering. He is a Distinguished Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Technology Sydney and the Director of its Transport Research Centre. He is recognized for his contributions to transportation geomechanics, particularly rail and road infrastructure, ground improvement, and sustainable use of recycled materials. In 2024, he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for significant service to civil engineering. He is also the winner of 6th International Civil Engineer Award in 2024 for lifetime outstanding contributions to Civil Engineering (José E. Ibarra Foundation, Madrid, Spain) and 2024 Sir John Holland Civil Engineer of the Year (Institution of Engineers Australia).
Early life and education.
Professor Indraratna was born in Sri Lanka. He attended Ananda College and later received the Lord Mountbatten Scholarship to study at the United World College of the Atlantic in Wales, UK. He earned his BSc (Hons) in Civil Engineering and MSc in Soil Mechanics and Engineering Seismology from Imperial College London. He completed his PhD in Geotechnical Engineering at the University of Alberta in 1987.
Academic career.
After working as a senior research engineer at the Geomechanics Research Centre in Ontario, Canada, Professor Indraratna began his traditional academic career at the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) in Thailand (1988–1991), followed by a long tenure at the University of Wollongong for nearly 3 decades. He later joined the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) as Distinguished Professor and Director of the Transport Research Centre. He has held visiting professorships at institutions such as MIT, Cambridge, IITs, ETH Zurich, and others.
Research and contributions.
Indraratna is known for his work on:
He has published over 1,000 scholarly works, including 500+ peer-reviewed journal articles and 14 books. His work has been cited over 33,000 times, with an h-index above 90. According to ScholarGPS, Prof. Indraratna is ranked #1 in Geotechnics worldwide over the past five years and is among the top five scholars of all time in both Geotechnics and Geotechnical Engineering
Patents and standards.
He holds a patent for the tyre-cell track foundation (Australian Patent No. 2018214448), and contributed to: