Fellow of the Royal Society (2013); Officer of the Order of Canada (2018); Inaugural winner of the NSERC Donna Strickland Prize for Societal Impact of Natural Sciences and Engineering Research (2022)
Ronald Kerry Rowe (born 13 September 1951) is a Canadian civil engineer of Australian birth, one of the pioneers of geosynthetics.[1]
Education
Rowe was educated at Fort Street High School, Sydney (1964-1969) and the University of Sydney, where he was awarded a BSc (Computer Science) in 1973, BE (First Hons, Civil Engineering) and the University Medal in 1975, a PhD in 1979 and D.Eng in 1993.
Career and research
Rowe worked as a geotechnical engineer with the Australian Government Department of Construction prior to emigrating to Canada in 1978, where he spent 22 years as a professor, including 8 years as Chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at The University of Western Ontario, London, Canada.
From 2000 to 2010 he served as Vice-Principal (Research) at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario where he was responsible for the administration of all research (in Business, Education, Humanities, Law, Social Sciences, Physical and Biological Sciences, Engineering and Applied Sciences, Health Sciences and Medicine). He is presently (2023) a Professor and the Canada Research Chair in Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering in the Department of Civil Engineering at Queen's.
His research has covered contaminant migration through soil and rock, landfill design, containment of contaminated sites, geosynthetics (including geotextiles, geomembranes, geogrids, geonets etc.), tailings storage facilities and dams, reinforced embankments and walls, tunnels in soft ground and the failure of slopes and excavations. In particular he has researched the effectiveness of plastic (geomembrane) liners and geosynthetic clay liners (a composite material incorporating clay) that limit contamination from mining operations and waste disposal facilities.[2]
He is a past President of the International Geosynthetics Society, the Canadian Geotechnical Society and the Engineering Institute of Canada.[3]
