IEEE Newsletter - University of Peradeniya Volume 2 (March 2019) | Page 16

04) What was the reason
behind choosing a career as an
electrical and electronic
engineer? Was that something you
were passionate about?
That's a good ques on. As I
men oned before, we went for
training before star ng the academic
program. At the end of the training I
wanted to be a Civil Engineer. I think
at that point, my father said that the
Civil Engineers are paid less. I looked
around and found out that it was
true. So, I wanted to do something
through which I could get a decent
income. On top of that, I had done
some hands-on work at home towards electronics. I meddled with amplifiers, radios, transmi ers etc.
Although that's not a hundred percent engineering, I felt like I could do something in that area. I was a bit
confident. That is how I started doing it.
05) What were your plans after graduation? To
pursue higher studies or to join the academic
staff?
Actually, during final year just
before the final exams, there
was a no ce saying that
Lanka Transformers was
looking for an engineer.
During that me CEB never
recruited and it was very
difficult to find jobs. So, I
wanted to go to Lanka
Transformers. I went to Prof. Janaka Ekanayake and
said that I am interested in it. But he advised me to
stay in academia because he thought that I could
serve be er there. So, I didn't go to the industry,
I got this Ph.D. opportunity because the
department had a program with the Swedish
Interna onal Development Agency (SIDA). They had
a program to increase the research capacity in the
department. They gave scholarships with no bonds,
and I was awarded a scholarship.
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06)
Where did you attend
for your Ph.D. and what field
was it based on? What
influenced you to choose
that particular field?
I did my PhD in the Royal
Ins tute of Technology in
Sweden. It's called KTH in
short.
The reason why I did this par cular project was
because the SIDA, SAREC gave me that project. It was
not me who wrote the project proposal. So, I did it
and it was a collec on of Electrical Machines, Power
Electronics, Controls and Computer Networking, and
also a bit of electronics just to implement things. I
liked the project because it involved a lot of things
that I liked. So, I took it. I had to do it with minimum
supervision because my supervisor was a machine
designs guy. He didn't want to get involved with the
networking and other stuff. So I had to meet different
people to get different opinions and I had to work a
li le bit with the Swedish industry as well.
IEEE Newsletter University of Peradeniya