Professor Ranjith Pathegama Gamage FTSE
Resource recovery innovator
Professor in Geomechanics Engineering, Monash University (VIC)
Professor Ranjith Pathegama Gamage is Professor in Geomechanics Engineering and has worked for the past 15 years at Monash University, where he leads a multidisciplinary research team dedicated to innovating with rigorous science and effective technologies the responsible production of energy and minerals from deep in the earth.
Giving full weight to industry inputs, he is also concerned to meet the sustainability requirements in UN Sustainability Goals 7, 9 and 13. His team’s remarkable new compound (patent pending) offers a revolutionary way to fracture rock for controlled liberation of its minerals – promising to replace current practices in both open-cut and underground mines.
The primary objective of his research is to develop and understand critical aspects of resource recovery, with the longer-term goal of promoting technological innovation for environmental protection and safe practical recovery of resources from deep earth. Through a series of projects funded by the ARC and industry, he is working on micro- and macro-scale studies of reservoir rocks.
Professor Gamage received an Elsevier-Scopus Excellence in Sustainability Award in 2017, an Australian Leadership Award in 2012 and an ARC Future Fellowship in 2009.