Rudolph Bonaparte, Ph.D., P.E., BC.GE, NAE, Dist.M.ASCE, a registered professional engineer in 20 states who served 20 years as president and CEO of Geosyntec Consultants, has been honored with inclusion by ASCE in its 2026 class of distinguished members. He was selected for exceptional lifetime achievements in geoenvironmental engineering, most notably for developing methods for the analysis, design, and evaluation of landfill waste containment systems; his decades of business leadership in the profession; and his impact as a mentor to younger professionals and students.
ASCE will honor Bonaparte and the 2026 distinguished members at the 2026 OPAL Gala, Thursday, Oct. 15 in Reston, Virginia.
Bonaparte has advanced the state of the art in geoenvironmental engineering through more than 80 authored or co-authored technical papers, book chapters, and research reports, including 5 major U.S. Environmental Protection Agency guidance and technical resource documents. These publications have advanced the design and performance of bottom liner and cover systems for municipal, industrial and hazardous waste containment facilities, the geotechnical stability of those facilities, geosynthetics, including geomembranes and geogrids, and earth retaining structures and ground improvement for new construction and natural hazard mitigation.
He has been the project manager and/or engineer of record for numerous important geoenvironmental projects. Of note, he was the engineer of record for the sophisticated low-level radioactive on-site waste disposal facility, or OSDF, constructed at the U.S. Department of Energy Fernald Preserve site in Ohio. This facility contains 2.5-million cubic-yards of radioactive and hazardous waste generated during the demolition and cleanup of a former Cold-War uranium ore refining plant. His design for the Fernald OSDF has been adopted for other U.S. DOE facilities, such as the Portsmouth and Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant sites in Ohio and Kentucky, respectively.
Bonaparte was also Geosyntec’s chairman of the board for 14 years. Over the years, he was instrumental in leading the firm from a startup to a highly regarded international engineering and consulting company with over 2,500 employees.
He received ASCE’s 2016 OPAL lifetime achievement award in design. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2007 for contributions to geoengineering with geosynthetics, the design of landfill waste-containment systems, and leadership in geotechnical engineering practice. In 2018, Bonaparte was selected by the ASCE Geo-Institute for its Terzaghi Lecture award and as a “GeoLegend” in 2021. He has chaired many of the Society’s symposiums and served on its relevant committees. By invitation, he was a member of the Blue-Ribbon Review Panel for the recent ASCE G-I Manual of Geoenvironmental Practice.
Bonaparte earned his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, and his master’s and doctoral degrees in geotechnical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. Since 2016, he has served as a part-time professor of the practice in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, developing and teaching a course on global engineering leadership.
Nominations for the 2027 class are due Dec. 15. Email [email protected] for more information.
