Author: ichitsty2

Mr. Pushpananda Ekanayaka

Mr. Pushpananda Ekanayaka has been designing letters of the Sinhala script, in different shapes from the time he was a young child. The first Sinhala font Mr. Ekanayaka designed was Malithi. In 1998, Mr. Ekanayaka released 10 fonts which he had developed, but these did not include a text typeface font. There was a necessity for a text font and consequently Mr. Ekanayake designed the hugely popular Sinhala ASCII font FM Abhaya. Thereafter, it was necessary to design and develop Sinhala fonts of various styles intended for different purposes. Consequently, he designed and developed 12 Sinha...
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Dr. Ranee Jayamaha

     Dr. Ranee Jayamaha was awarded her first degree, BA (Hons) in Money and Banking from the University of Ceylon, Peradeniya in 1970. She was a lecturer in the Department of Economics at the University of Peradeniya for a year and then joined the Economic Research Department (ERD) of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) in 1971, as an Economist. Thereafter, she received a British Council scholarship and proceeded to the University of Sterling, Scotland, UK to read for a two-year (1975-1976) Master’s Degree. She was awarded the MSc in Economics in 1976 and upon her retu...
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Dr. Kavan Ratnatunga

  Dr. Kavan Ratnatunga (Dr. Kavan) was educated at Royal College, Colombo and at the University of Colombo from where he received a BSc (First class, honors degree) in Physics, in 1976.   He commenced his career in Astronomy at the University of Pittsburgh, USA, where he completed a M.Sc. degree in Astronomy.  He read for a PhD at the Australian National University.  Thereafter, Dr. Kavan went back to USA.  At the Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton, in 1984, he first had an email address.  From Princeton Dr. Kavan went to the Dominion Astrophysical Obse...
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Mr. Siri Samarakkody

Mr. Siri Samarakkody was educated at Royal College Colombo. He was the Secretary of the Radio Club. This is where he first evinced interest in electronics. He has been awarded an Honors Degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, from the UK. He was a pioneer in bringing mobile telephony to Sri Lanka – he was the founder CEO of Celltel Lanka where he was involved in initial license negotiation and technical aspects. He was also involved in setting up Lanka Internet, which started the first commercial website in Sri Lanka, www.lanka.net. (more…)
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Prof. Rohan Samarajiva

Prof. Rohan Samarajiva was Director General of Telecommunications in Sri Lanka in 1998-99. During his tenure, a regulatory environment was created and the foundation for a competitive telecom sector were laid. He has contributed significantly toward telecommunications reforms which have impacted the development of the Internet in Sri Lanka. During the period 2002 – 2004, Prof. Samarajiva was the Team Leader at the Sri Lanka Ministry for Economic Reform, Science and Technology and participated in designing the e-Sri Lanka Development Program which was implemented by the ICT Agency (ICTA) of...
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Mr. Janaka de Silva

Mr. Janaka de Silva graduated from the University of Ceylon, Peradeniya in 1966 offering Physics and Mathematics.  He holds an MBA. degree from the University of Sri Jayewardenepura, and is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka (CA Sri Lanka), the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants and the Institute of Bankers of Sri Lanka. Mr. Janaka de Silva’s association with computing commenced in 1978 when he was assigned the task of computerizing the operations of the Bank of Ceylon.  Later Mr. Janaka de Silva joined Sampath Bank as the founder General M...
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Mr. Balachandran Gnanasekaraiyer

Mr. Balachandran Gnanasekaraiyer has been responsible for key developments in the arena of ICT in Local Languages. As a Consultant to the Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA) of Sri Lanka, in 2006 he commenced working on a Tamil keyboard layout to be standardized. He later worked on developing the draft Tamil ICT standard which encompassed the keyboard layout for Tamil with keying-in sequences, encoding for Tamil characters aligned to the Unicode standard and a Collation Sequence for Tamil. These were included in the draft standard which ICTA proposed to the Sri Lanka Stand...
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Mr. S. Shanmugarajah

Mr. S. Shanmugarajah (Shan) is an experienced IT professional who has been practicing in the software industry for the past 19 years. He specializes in mobile technology, on which he has focused for the past decade. He is thoroughly conversant in telecommunication software development with skills in Android, iOS .NET, Java and middleware. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering Degree in Computer Science, from the Bharathidasan University, Trichy, India. He is presently the CEO and Chief Architect of mBrain Technologies. Shan was an External Consultant in ICT in Local Languages at the ICT Agen...
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Mr. Niel Gunadasa

Mr. Niel Gunadasa has been awarded a B.Sc. degree from the University of Kelaniya, a Postgraduate Diploma in Education Management from the Postgraduate Institute of Management, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, a Postgraduate Diploma in Education from the University of Colombo, a Postgraduate Diploma in Education Management from the National Institute of Education (NIE), Maharagama and a M.Sc. on Information Management from the University of Sheffield, UK. Mr. Niel Gunadasa is at present the Director of Education, (SLEAS-I) of the Data Management Branch, of the Ministry of Education, Sr...
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Mr. Lal Chandranath

Mr. Lal Chandranath is a former Managing Director of DMS Electronics Ltd and DMS Software Technologies. He was a member of the founder team of Data Management Systems Ltd (DMS) in 1978 and served as a Director until June 2017. He was also a founding team member of DMS Electronics Ltd in 1981, where he served as a Director until June 2017. Later in 2014, Mr. Chandranath was made Director/ General Manager of DMS Software Technologies (Pvt) Limited and he was instrumental in negotiating business agreements with Oracle Corporation covering many segments allowing for rapid growth. Mr. Chandran...
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