Ranjith Gamage

Ranjith Pathegama Gamage is an Australian engineer and academic at Monash University, where he is a Vice-Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He is known for his research of the Carbon sequestration for extracting resources from deep earth and natural gas from coal seams, shale, and tight geological formations. His PhD was on the “Analytical and Experimental Modelling of Coupled Water and Air Flow through Rock Joints”. His first job after the PhD was as an assistant professor at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Academic and research career

Gamage is the founder and director of the Deep Earth Energy Research Lab at Monash University. In 2025–2026, he serves as a Senior Fulbright Scholar at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in California, United States. His research areas include Carbon sequestration, unconventional oil, unconventional gas (shale gas, tight gas, coal seam gas, gas hydrate), deep geothermal energy, geomechanics, rock mechanics, enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methodologies, hydraulic fracturing, sand production from unconsolidated reservoirs, and future technologies for in-situ mining. Around 2015 he began developing a new product for sustainable deep earth resource recovery: called SREMA. He also serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Geomechanics and Geophysics for GeoEnergy and GeoResource. and is the founder and Chair of the International Conference on Geomechanics for GeoEnergy and GeoResources (IC3G) which runs every two years.

In June 2026, Gamage was appointed to the inaugural cohort of Vice-Chancellor’s Distinguished Professors at Monash University, a title recognising senior professors for sustained international pre-eminence in their discipline.

Awards and honours In 2010 Gamage was named a fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and Engineers Australia. In 2017 he received a Elsevier Scopus award for Sustainability. Then in 2019, Gamage was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering. In 2020 he was named a finalist for 2020 R&D 100 Awards, and was named a Fellow of Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3) and the Geological Society in the UK. From 2020-21 The Australian listed him as one of nine global leaders in Mining and Mineral Resources technology, and in 2021 the publication named him an Australian Field Leader in the field of Environmental and Geological Engineering. In 2021 he was also elected as Member of European Academy of Science and Arts, Europe (MAE), and in 2022 he was elected as Foreign Fellow of Indian National Academy of Engineering, India (FINAE).

In 2023 he was elected as Foreign Fellow of Chinese Academy of Engineering (FCAE). The Australian named him a Global Research Leader in Mineral Resources and Geotechnical Engineering that year, In 2024, Gamage was named a Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate. He became a Senior Fulbright Scholar in 2025, where his project “Revolutionising Critical Mineral Extraction for the Renewable Energy Transition” will be pursued at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in California.

In 2025, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in recognition of his significant contributions and impact in the field of sustainable resource recovery. In the same year, he was named a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher, recognising sustained global research influence and citation impact. He also received the Australia–China Alumni Award Medal for Contribution to Cultural Exchange at the 2025 Beijing Awards Ceremony, awarded by the Australia–China Alumni Association. Additionally, he was recognised as an Australian Leader in Mining & Mineral Resources by The Australian Research Magazine for his contributions to the field. He further received the University of Wollongong Alumni Award for Research Excellence in 2025, acknowledging his research leadership and global impact. He also received the Chinese Government Friendship Award, the highest honour awarded to foreign experts for outstanding contributions to China’s development.