I had the privilege of interviewing Dr. Jayeni Hitibandaralage. She specialized in Plant Biotechnology (PBT) at the University of Colombo. She has worked in the industry prior to going for her a PhD at the University of Queensland, Australia. Her PhD was groundbreaking! Titled: PhD for Developing World’s First Meristem Based Commercial Tissue Culture Platform for Avocado. She also has her Bio Tech Lab setup in Sri Lanka and while doing research in Australia, she is running her company in Sri Lanka. I personally found this inspirational because while balancing the role of a parent she was able to accomplish these ventures. I hope this talk gives inspiration to many out there! Please check the timecodes in the discussion section so you get an overview of the topics discussed. Video link: https://youtu.be/aafDYQhoBFU

In this Science Talks episode I wanted to share the Academic Journey of Roshini Randeniya. She is doing her PhD in Neuroscience at the Queensland Brain Institute, University of Queensland, Australia. She is someone who didn’t do any Undergraduate research nor a 4 Year Special Degree. She did her Bachelors at the University of Colombo and then decided to work in the private sector (Sri Lanka Family Planning Institute) for a few years and then decided to pursue a PhD. Her dissertation is on “Neural Pathways of Sensory Learning in Autism Spectrum Disorder”.

Mahesh Herath is currently doing his MPhil at the University of Colombo. He is also a Research Scientist at Arthur C. Clark Institute in Sri Lanka. He has discovered two exo planets using the data generated by the Kepler/K2 Satellite. He obtained his MSc in Physics from the University of Southampton, UK and Advanced MSc in Space Science at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. “Two temperate sub-Neptune’s transiting the star EPIC 212737443” Herath et al. 2019. Published by MNRAS journals

සත්ව විද්‍යාව, එහි වැදගත්කම සහ එමගින් බිහිවෙන රැකියා අවස්ථා මෙම සංවාදය මගින් දැනගැනීමට ලැබේ.   I had the privilege of interviewing a Zoologist, Dr. Himali Ratnayake. She obtained her Bachelors from the University of Colombo and her Final Year research project was on ‘Impact of parasite load on selected parameters of health status: Investigations using a Fulvous fruit bat (Rousettus leschenaulti) model’. Later on she went to the University of Melbourne, Australia to do her PhD on ‘Understanding how extreme heat events affect the heat budget of Australian flying-foxes (Pteropus spp.): Roles of morphology, physiology and behaviour’

In today’s #ScienceTalks episode Malinda De Silva will take us on a virtual tour inside CERN – the largest Science Laboratory in the world. He did his Bachelors in Physics at the University of Colombo, then went for his Masters to TUM (Technical University of Munich) and now he is doing his PhD at the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) in Hamburg, Germany.

I am please to invite my friend Charuni Pathmeswaran who is currently a PhD candidate at the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, Australia. She did her Undergraduate at the University of Colombo – specializing in Environmental Science, later doing her Masters at the University of Bristol, UK in Climate Change Science and Poilicy. Here’s her blog for further details: https://climatechai.weebly.com

I invited the Director of Vega Innovations – Dr. Beshan Kulapala for an interview on #ScienceTalks Get to know one of the main Engineers behind the Vega Car. The problems they had, his views on where we stand as a country in terms of innovation. Time-code of the discussion:

I interviewed Malsha Udayakantha who is a Chemistry PhD student at Texas A&M. She was an undergrad at University of Colombo, Sri Lanka Malsha worked in SLINTEC prior to receiving her PhD offer.