Past Recipients - 38 by 38 - Purdue University

Rachael Bisnett works on some of the world's largest dams that carry the potential for significant loss of life and economic consequences if something goes wrong. She was an early proponent of using risk to inform dam safety decisions and prioritize risk reduction actions, ultimately resulting in her appointments as principal engineer, dam and levee subsector lead, and risk practice lead for dams and levees for Stantec's $500M North American water business. In her career, she has been afforded the once-in-a-century opportunity to work on the Panama Canal expansion and was instrumental in designing foundations for new locks and developing the approach to document system reliability. Subsequently, she was hoisted into lead design and construction roles to retrofit a hydropower plant at the Red Rock flood control dam, where she led the design of a 69-foot cantilevered diaphragm wall — the tallest in the world.

With the U.S. Society on Dams (USSD) Embankment Dams Committee, she was the youngest person to hold a committee chair position and was named the organization's 2019 Exceptional Young Professional of the Year. In 2023, she received a Young Professional Award from the International Commission on Large Dams (ICOLD) and currently serves as a co-author of an ICOLD technical bulletin. She has published or presented more than 20 papers for conference proceedings, journals, and workshops.

"My Purdue degrees establish my credibility as an engineer, letting me spend more time focused on doing good work instead of working to break down barriers of entry," she said.