candidate. After all these rigorous evaluations, the IEEE
decided to elevate me to a fellow and I’m the only IEEE
fellow in the academic system in Sri Lanka. I personally
believe that my achievement has also boosted the status
of the department.
What is your message to any budding engineer – inno-
vator as a Senior Engineer and a professor in Electrical
and Electronic Engineering?
As I said, this is something which most of the present
engineers lack - you learn fundamentals, but you don’t
retain them. I think as a budding engineer, the first thing
is, you must learn fundamentals properly. When you learn
the fundamentals, you can do anything. I’m sure people
are telling that they know higher level things. But if you
shoot them a fundamental question, they don’t know
‘how’ or ‘why’. The main message I want to convey is, learn
what you learn properly and retain them for your life. The
advantage you have compared to us is that when we were
undergraduates, I can’t remember a single opportunity
that was available for us to present our work. We never
presented our work in any forum as undergraduates. But
you have so many forums. IEEE is one such forum. There
are projects and then there are other avenues. While
learning these fundamentals, you are also getting enough
opportunities to express yourself to fellow students and
sometimes to the public and so on. And that is why I think
you must take the maximum benefit of that opportunity
while you have it. We now talk in global forums without
any fear, with confidence, without having any experienc e
in our undergraduate days. But now, since you have that
experience, I’m sure you can do better than the most of
us in the future.
INTERVIEWED BY:
Naveena Amandani Jayarathne
Final Year
Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering
Nalindi Herath
Third Year
Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering
Madri Madawala
Second Year
Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering
Gauge Magazine University of Peradeniya 25