IQ Labs

Sahitha Karapitiya was selected to present his work at the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) for their Annual International Meeting in 2023. He is the only participant from Sri Lanka. He received his undergraduate degree in Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering from the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Peradeniya. The title of his research is "Simulation of the Temperature Profile of Coffee Beans Roasted Under Far-Infrared Radiation" done under the supervision of Professor K. S. P. Amaratunga (Sanath Amaratunga).

If you want to help Sahitha or get in touch with him:

Website sahitha.super.site

Email: [email protected]

Facebook Sahitha Karapitiya

Linkedin Sahitha Karapitiya

00:00 About Sahitha

01:24 Sahitha's story

04:07 What were your dreams?

06:48 Entering Faculty of Agriculture at Peradeniya

11:25 What is the potential of Agriculture faculty

15:02 Versatile degree programs

16:22 About Sahitha's research

19:46 Model development

22:26 Experimental Setup

25:15 About ASABE

26:35 Prof. Sanath Amaratunga

28:45 Side business

31:23 Time management

37:41 Plans for the future

Ayodhya Sovis Wickramasooriya is doing her Post Graduuate studies in Agricultural economics at the University of Goettingen, Germany. She is a graduate from the Wayamba University of Sri Lanka and she completed her bachelors in Agriculture Business Management.

Agricultural economics is a branch of economics that focuses on the study of agricultural production, consumption, and distribution of goods and services related to agriculture. The field of agricultural economics is concerned with understanding the complex interactions between farmers, consumers, policymakers, and other stakeholders in the agricultural sector.

00:00 About Ayodhya

03:49 Potential of Agriculture

04:27 About International Agriculture

05:55 Economics in Agriculture

13:10 Undergraduate research

16:24 Agriculture in the North

17:55 Banning of chemical fertilizers

20:29 Organic Farming

22:13 Sustainable Agriculture

26:23 New technologies

27:24 Will Sri Lanka continue with agriculture

31:52 Challenges of learning economics

32:53 Future plans

I invited Kethmi Hettige to talk about the Z-score. For those who did A/Ls in Sri Lanka - this is a life deciding equation. Kethmi received her Bachelors in Industrial Statistics and Mathematical Finance from the Faculty of Science, University of Colombo. She is currently doing her PhD in Singapore.

00:00 About Z-score

00:59 Origins of the equation

01:52 Statistical measure

04:30 Mean,SD can be subjective

05:33 Why use it for A/Ls?

06:46 How to calculate it?

10:35 Problem with 2011 A/Ls

11:49 Bell curves

14:03 Biggest assumption with Z-score

16:09 Is it a good method?

20:22 Representative samples

21:35 What determines cutoff marks?

රසායනික බන්ධන විවිධ පරිමාණ වලින් - Computational ව්‍යාපෘතියක් කරමු

Let's do a computational chemistry project using OpenMM (39:42)

How do chemists understand a chemical bond? Molecular orbital theory helps us understand this.

If you haven't watched the previous videos you can check it out here:

1. Quantum Vs Classical mechanics - https://youtu.be/EsRlDKCi2EM

2. What is a chemical bond? https://youtu.be/oERFHqewf_A

Many thanks to Dulitha Prasanna for joining the podcast to talk about Quantum Mechanics.

00:00 Mathematics of molecular orbital theory

03:39 Molecular orbital diagrams

05:09 Contribution of each orbitals

06:46 Intro to GAMESS (Practical example)

09:42 Input file (for Nitrogen)

18:30 Visualizing molecular orbitals

22:24 Our understanding of bonding

23:18 Calculations and output file

25:41 Anti-bonding orbitals

27:40 Benzene rings

29:02 Dipeptide hydrolysis

30:51 Computational range/length

33:31 Classical mechanics

36:31 Experiments Vs Simulations

39:06 Course-grained, mesoscale

39:42 OpenMM Python package

45:30 Interaction in solvent box

47:11 Using super computing clusters

49:43 Future projects (Fundraiser)

This is the second video about Quantum Mechanics. We will be talking about chemical bonding - what is the physical understanding of a chemical bond? If you haven't watched the first video you can check it out here: Quantum Vs Classical mechanics - https://youtu.be/EsRlDKCi2EM

Many thanks to Dulitha Prasanna for joining the podcast to talk about Quantum Mechanics. Stay tuned for more videos.

00:00 Second video

01:36 Hatree-Fock Theory

03:06 Joint probability

10:10 Wave functions as Gaussian functions

15:56 Different molecular scales

16:31 Explanation of bonding

17:59 Paper: Physical nature of chemical bond

23:00 Molecular orbital theory

Many thanks to Dulitha Prasanna for joining the podcast to talk about Quantum Mechanics. Stay tuned for more videos.

00:00 Our definition of "Quantum"

01:01 Dulitha's story

04:24 Classical Vs Quantum Mechanics

06:31 Newton's Vs Coulomb's law

07:39 Newton's law has its problems

09:29 Problems with Rutherford's theory

13:20 Need of Quantum theory

21:23 Wavefunctions

30:59 Density

37:50 Is electron cloud true?

39:42 Computational Quantum Chemistry

40:45 From one electron to two

Chaturanga Wengappuliarachchi did Biological Sciences for his A/Ls and decided to go to the Open University of Sri Lanka (OUSL).He completed the Bachelor of Science Honours Degree in Physics and conducted research in the following topic: “PVA/(2-Propanol) based bee-honey (core) and povidone-iodine (sheath) coaxial electrospun beads on string nanofibrous scaffold for controlled drug release" at the research labs of OUSL and NIFS (National Institute of Fundamental Studies). He will be starting his PhD at Virginia Tech (USA) in the Physics Department.

The purpose of this podcast was to give students the idea that they can re-invent themselves into different fields without sticking to the decisions they made before.

You can connect with him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chaturanga-wengappuliarachchi-7563681a1/

01:28 Hoping to do Medicine

05:22 Curiosity driven

08:56 Deciding on Open University

11:29 Open University Education system

18:03 Mathematics for Biologists

22:12 Biologists think differently

26:36 Undergraduate research

32:27 Nano fibers vs particles

37:32 Research facilities in OUSL

41:53 Favourite Physics areas

47:26 History of Science

51:34 Recommended books and Channels

59:56 Time to read books

1:04:26 Future plans

Many thanks to Indrajith for accepting my invitation again. Here we wanted to talk about the advantages of using LinkedIn to make connections and decide where your next career should be. 

00:39 LinkedIn with other social media apps

02:29 Benefits of making connections

09:25 What makes you stand out

11:00 Building trust and accountability

13:48 How to present yourself?

17:06 Content creation on LinkedIn

18:27 Profile picture is necessary

19:57 Header 

24:39 Contact information

26:00 Personal branding

27:42 LinkedIn top voices

29:22 Posting in Sinhala or English?

31:23 Personal stories

33:54 Write keywords first

35:22 Experiences and referrels

38:21 Alumni Groups

39:58 Connection requests

48:51 Search your Degree

51:06 Informational Interviews

54:11 Messaging

56:13 Talk about your dreams

Hasitha Eranda is a Theoretical Physicist at UC Irvine, California. He did his bachelors at the Department of Physics in the University of Colombo. He is currently working on searching for relic galaxy candidates in N-body cosmological simulations. 

You can find more details about his work from this paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2005.09720.pdf

00:00 About Hasitha

02:01 Final year project in UOC

03:07 PhD thesis - Cosmological simulations

05:07 How to be a Theoretical Physicist?

09:09 Thought experiments

12:30 Astronomy Vs Astro-Physics

15:59 Cosmology

18:19 Problems with Science

19:10 importance of LIGO

19:52 About Black Holes

21:58 Problem with models

25:31 Gravity models

32:03 Problems with model fitting

35:36 Quantum gravity

41:06 Science is political

42:01 Numerical simulations

45:50 Big Bang Vs Inflation theory

53:38 Same data, different theories

Chalinda Abeykoon is the Managing Partner for nVentures, an early-stage VC fund focusing on fintech startups, licensed under the Monetary Authority of Singapore. He has been working with startups for almost 15 years, mentoring over 3,000 entrepreneurs. Over the years he has helped launch over 50 startups across South & Southeast Asia. He is a recipient of the prestigious Chevening Fellowship from the University of Oxford.

Chalinda blogs about the startup world and you can check it here from LinkedIn: 

https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/seed-circle-6883623682577719296/

00:00 Intro 

00:36 Chalinda's story

04:16 About nVentures VC Fund

05:08 What are Fintech companies?

09:26 Startup ecosystems in Sri Lanka

14:52 Startup hubs in Sri Lanka

17:56 What is a startup?

21:52 How do VC funds make money?

24:10 How do know if the startup will fail/succeed?

35:30 Future of Sri Lanka

41:05 Global politics

44:05 Digital Nomad visas

45:15 Advice to the youth 

55:32 Improve your writing