A.P.S. Selvadurai
Dr. A.P.S. Selvadurai is currently William Scott Professor and James McGill Professor in
the Department of Civil Engineering and Applied Mechanics, McGill University,Montréal, Canada. Born in Sri Lanka, he received his undergraduate education in civilengineering at Brighton Polytechnic, U.K., and pursued graduate studies in Soil
Mechanics at Imperial College of Science and Technology, London University andApplied Mechanics at Stanford University. In 1971 he obtained his PhD degree in
Theoretical Mechanics from the University of Nottingham, under the tutelage of theeminent continuum mechanicist Professor A.J.M. Spencer FRS, for research in the areaof “Non-linear Elasticity”. In 1986 the University of Nottingham awarded him its firstever research DSc in Theoretical Mechanics for research into Mathematical Modelling ofProblems in Geomechanics and Elastomechanics. He joined the Department of Civil
Engineering at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada in 1975 as Assistant Professor,became Professor in 1981 and Head of the Department from 1982 to 1991. In 1993, hewas invited by McGill University to become Chair of the Department of Civil
Engineering and Applied Mechanics, a position he held till 1997. He has held Visiting
Professorships at the Division of Theoretical Mechanics, University of Nottingham, U.K,
Universität Stuttgart, Germany, The Laboratoire 3S, Université Joseph Fourier,Grenoble, France; The Department of Civil Engineering, University of Canterbury,Christchurch, New Zealand; The Department of Civil and Structural Engineering,
Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China; The School of Civil Engineering, Universityof New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, Departement de Genie Civil, Ecole
Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland and The Department of CivilEngineering and Geosciences of the Technical University Delft, The Netherlands.
In 1998, Dr. Selvadurai received the Humboldt Forschungspreis (Humboldt Foundationof Germany), given to internationally acclaimed scientists and engineers. In 2000, hebecame the first civil engineer to be awarded the Killam Research Fellowship (CanadaCouncil for the Arts), one of Canada’s most distinguished research awards, recognizing
his outstanding research record and proposals for continuing research. In 2001 he wasawarded the Inaugural John Booker Medal (International Association for Computer
Methods and Advances in Geomechanics). In 2003 he received the prestigious Max
Planck Forschungspreis in the Engineering Sciences.. In 2007, he was awarded theprestigious Killam Prize in Engineering from the Canada Council for the Arts and theGold Medal of the Canadian Congresses of Applied Mechanics.
Dr. Selvadurai is a recognized world leader in continuum mechanics, theoretical,
computational and experimental geomechanics, environmental geomechanics and appliedmathematics. His research includes the mechanics of elastic media undergoing large
deformations, fracture mechanics, micromechanics of inclusions and defects,
poroelasticity, coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical processes in deformable media,
mechanics of inhomogeneous media, interfaces in geomechanics, fragmentation of brittle
geomaterials, transport in porous media and mechanics of geosynthetics subjected tochemical exposure. These studies have profoundly influenced engineering activities
related to nuclear waste management, soil-structure interaction and northerngeomechanics associated with offshore structures and buried pipelines and environmental
geomechanics. He has published over 220 research papers in journals devoted to appliedmechanics, geomechanics and applied mathematics, transport in porous media andcomputational mechanics. He is the author or co-author of texts devoted to Elastic

Analysis of Soil-Foundation Interaction (Elsevier, 1979), Elasticity and Geomechanics(with R.O. Davis) (Cambridge University Press, 1996), Partial Differential Equations inMechanics Vols. 1&2 (Springer-Verlag, 2000) and Plasticity and Geomechanics (withR.O. Davis) (Cambridge University Press, 2002). He has also, edited or co-edited 9 books
and 4 Special Issues of International Journals with peer review, devoted to nuclear waste
disposal, environmental geomechanics, mathematics and mechanics of granular media,
and theoretical solid mechanics. He serves in the Editorial Boards of nine leading
International Journals devoted to Geomechanics, Applied Mechanics, Computational
Mechanics and Engineering Mathematics. He is a Fellow of the Engineering Institute ofCanada, American Academy of Mechanics, Canadian Society for Civil Engineering, The
Institute for Mathematics and its Applications and the Canadian Academy ofEngineering. In 2007 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.