Past Professor R.J.K.S.K. Ranatunga (1968 - 1999)

Dr. Rannatunga obtained the B.Sc. Engineering Degree in 1967 with Second Class Honors (Upper division). He was appointed as the Assistant Lecturer in Production Engineering immediately after that. He proceeded to the university of Birmingham and obtained the Master’s Degree in Production Engineering and scientific management in 1970 and doctoral degree in Production Technology in 1974. He returned to the University of Peradeniya after completing the studies in the United Kingdom. After that he worked as a Senior Lecturer in Production Engineering and as the Head of the department of Production Engineering. He had been teaching Production Engineering and Industrial Engineering subjects in the faculty over three decades and has proved himself to be an excellent teacher. He has contributed immensely to the department of Production Engineering. In addition to he was holding the post of Director of the Engineering workshop where he was responsible for the management of the Workshop. In addition, he was actively engaged in research within the spare time available among a heavy load of teaching and published a number of papers.

Emeritus Professor S.D. Pathirana (1979 - 2020)

Susantha Pathirana was with the Department of Manufacturing and Industrial Engineering at the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. He received the BScEng in Production Engineering from the University of Peradeniya in 1978, and MSc in Automatic Control and DEng in Mechanical Engineering in 1982 and 1989, respectively. He held a number of faculty positions at the University of Peradeniya. He was the Head of the Department of Manufacturing and Industrial Engineering during several periods since 1990 and also held the position of the Director of Engineering Workshops since 1990. From 2002 to 2005, he was also the Dean of the Faculty of Engineering. His teaching and research interests include precision machining, robotics & automation and modeling & control of dynamic systems. He was a visiting research fellow at the University of Tokyo, Japan, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium and at the University of New South Wales, Australia. He has also held a number of key positions at the Ministry of Industrial Development and Ministry of Agriculture of the Government of the Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka. He is a Fellow of IESL, Member of both IEEE (USA) and IET (UK). Professor Pathirana, who devoted his knowledge to the department of Manufacturing and Industrial Engineering as a professor, retired in September 2020. Read more..

Visiting Honorary Professor Gamini Dissanayake (2021-2024)

Gamini Dissanayake is the James N Kirby Distinguished Professor of Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering at University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). He graduated in Mechanical/Production Engineering from the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. He received his M.Sc. in Machine Tool Technology and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering (Robotics) from the University of Birmingham, England. He taught at University of Peradeniya, National University of Singapore and University of Sydney before joining UTS in 2002.At UTS, he founded the UTS Centre for Autonomous Systems; currently a team of seventy staff and students working in Robotics. His main contributions to robotics has been in Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping, which has resulted in one of the most cited journal publications in robotics.He has also been involved in developing robots for a range of industry applications including cargo handling, disaster response, mining, infrastructure maintenance and aged care. Read more..

Professor of merit Asela K. Kulatunga (2020 December - Present)

Asela K. Kulatunga joined the Department of Manufacturing and Industrial Engineering from August 2007. He received the BSc Eng. in Production Engineering from the University of Peradeniya in 2000. After the graduation he served the same department as a junior staff member for short period and subsequently joined as a lecturer to the Department of Industrial Management of Wayamba University of Sri Lanka. In 2003, he received Presidential scholarship from Sri Lankan Government and Centre of Excellence for Autonomous Systems Scholarship of university of Technology, Sydney Australia to pursue Masters in Engineering and later extended to PhD and completed in 2013. In August 2007, Department of Production Engineering while he was pursuing postgraduate studies and became a senior lecturer there in 2013. In November 2015 he won the gLink Erasmus Mundus Research Fellowship to pursue postdoctoral research at the Chair of Maritime Business and Logistics, University of Bremen, Germany till September 2016. His research interests include Logistics and Supply Chain Management, Sustainable Manufacturing, Sustainable Production and Consumption related to circular economic concepts... Read more..