After completing a degree in Civil Engineering in July 1975 at the Technical Univ. of Valencia (Spain), he started postgraduate studies at the Civil Engineering Dept. of Swansea University, Wales, UK. There he completed in June 1976 a Master of Science degree (M.Sc. Thesis on Development of a finite strip method for analysis of bridges and folded plate structures) and later a Ph.D. degree (Dec. 1978) under the supervision of Prof. O. C. Zienkiewicz (Ph. D. Thesis on Plastic flow in metals with special reference to: I) Coupled thermal flow. II) Thin sheet metal forming). His Ph.D. studies were funded by an Alcoa Research Grant from USA.

In February 1979 he moved to the Technical University of Catalunya (UPC) in Barcelona, Spain, where he was hired as an Associated Professor on Structural Mechanics at the School of Civil Engineering. He became a Full Professor with tenure on June 1983. From March 1983 to March 1989 he was the Director of the School of Civil Engineering at UPC. 

On March 1987 he founded CIMNE (International Center for Numerical Methods in Engineering, www.cimne.com), a research center specialized in the development and application of numerical methods in engineering. Since 1987 he is the Executive Vice-President and Director of CIMNE.

Has supervised 49 Ph.D. Thesis and 95 Master Thesis . 30 of his former students are now full professors in Universities in Spain (13), USA (4), UK (2) and Latin America (11). He has had a significant impact in the creation of new scientific groups in cooperation with his former students.

In 1989 he was the founder and first President of the Spanish Association for Numerical Methods in Engineering (SEMNI, www.cimne.upc.es/semni). 

He was one of the founders and first Vice-President (1993-95) of the European Community on Computational Methods in Applied Sciences (ECCOMAS, www.eccomas.org)

His research activities have spread over a range of multidisciplinary fields which he has contributed relevant theories and methods of scientific and industrial relevance.

The above research lines have been developed in the framework of over 400 RTD projects carried out in cooperation with the main engineering companies in Spain and worldwide. Some 120 of these projects have been developed in the framework of EC programmes.

In parallel with the RTD activities, Eugenio Oñate has organized as chair person 45 international congresses on topics closely related with the above RTD lines. See list of congresses in www.cimne.com .

He has published 302 papers in scientific journals. He has written 4 text books and is the editor of 52 books in different topics of Computational Engineering Mechanics. He is the editor of three scientific journals (one of which is published by Springer) and 3 books series in Computational Mechanics. He is the author of 62 chapters in books, 40 monographs, 435 papers in conference proceedings and 230 research reports .

He has 4770 citations in the field of Computational Engineering Science. He has an h index of 42 and 19 papers with more than 50 citations.

He is regularly invited to deliver Keynote (Plenary) Lectures in the main International Conferences in Computational Engineering Science (25 Plenary Lectures and 30 Keynote lectures in the last 20 years).

His research work has been recognized in many Prizes and Awards.