IQ Labs

It is my great pleasure to present you Rusiru Gambheera - one of the brightest minds in the Department of Mathematics from the University of Colombo. He received his education from the Rajapaksha Central College in Weeraketiya. He is famous for being the guy who was ranked first in the Island in the 2012 GCE Advanced Level exam, but he chose to enter the Faculty of Science to pursue his dream of becoming a Scientist. He is currently reading for his PhD at the University of California San Diego - USA.

Nirodha Ranasinghe is currently a Scientific Officer at the Atomic Energy Board of Sri Lanka. He completed his undergraduate degree from the Wayamba University of Sri Lanka. His team won the 2020 "Sahasak Maha Nimawum" contest under the Physics category. In this episode we go into details about his team's contribution towards the School Science syllabus and his views on Nuclear Energy.

You might remember Mudith from our Erasmus Scholarship video and in this podcast I wanted to go into detail about his Undergraduate and Masters Research. Mudith obtained his Bachelors from the University of Ruhuna - Faculty of Fisheries and Marine Sciences Technology, later went to France, UK, USA (Louisiana State University) for his Masters. I have included videos and images to make this an immersive story - hope you like it!

This time I invited an expert from the Arts and Humanities. Naveen Wickremeratne is an Economics Graduate from the Faculty of Arts at the University of Colombo and is a Fulbright Scholar. He obtained his Masters from the University of South Carolina, USA.   His undergraduate research was under International Economics - in the area of Global Production sharing and I believe there are many things we can learn from it, as future Scientists, Engineers or Technologists.

Special thanks to Devini Seneratna for accepting my invitation. She specialized in Statistics at the University of Colombo and later went for her Masters at Stanford University, USA. She is currently working as a Data Scientist.

Dr. Himaya is currently working at the Institute of Molecular Bioscience at the University of Queensland, Australia as a Researcher. Her work focusses on animal venom - (the poisonous cone snail to be precise) and their uses. She obtained her Bachelors from the University of Peradeniya and went to South Korea for her PhD.

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’