Saturday Nov 30, 2024
Saturday Nov 30, 2024
Tuesday, 6 November 2012 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Prof. Gehan Amaratunga will deliver the IESL Ray Wijewardene Memorial Lecture 2012 on Thursday, 15 November 2012 at 5.15 p.m. at the IESL Auditorium located at 120/15 Wijerama Mawatha, Colombo 7. Attendance is free for the event organised by the Ray Wijewardene Charitable Trust together with the Institute of Engineers Sri Lanka.
Gehan Amaratunga FREng., FIET, CEng. obtained his B.Sc (’79) from Cardiff University and Ph.D (’83) from Cambridge, both in electrical/electronic engineering. He has held the 1966 professorship in engineering at the University of Cambridge since 1998.
He currently heads the Electronics, Power and Energy Conversion Group, one of four major research groups within the Electrical Engineering Division of the Cambridge Engineering Faculty. He has an active research program on the synthesis and electronic applications of carbon nanotubes and other nanoscale materials.
His group has many ‘firsts’ emanating from his research in carbon, including field emission from N doped thin film amorphous carbon and diamond, laboratory synthesis of carbon nanonions, tetrahedral amorphous carbon (‘amorphous diamond’)-Si heterojunctions , deterministic growth of single isolated carbon nanotubes in devices, high current nanotube field emitters and the polymer-nanotube composite solar cells.
He currently sits on the steering committee of the Nokia-Cambridge University Strategic Collaboration on Nanoscience and Nanotechnology and is the head of the Nokia-CU Nanotechnology for Energy Programme.
His group was amongst the first to demonstrate integration of logic level electronics for signal processing and high voltage power transistors in a single IC (chip). His current research is focused on integrated power conversion circuits.
He is a co-founder of CamSemi – which is commercialising a new generation of power and mixed-signal ICs for power management with venture capital investment. He is also a founder of Enecsys, a company formed with his research students to develop and market integrated electronics (microinverters) for grid connection of solar PV systems. Nanoinstruments, a company he founded with his colleagues to commercialise CNT synthesis equipment, was acquired by Aixtron AG in 2007.
He has previously held faculty positions at the Universities of Liverpool (Chair in Electrical Engineering), Cambridge, and Southampton. He has held the UK Royal Academy of Engineering Overseas Research Award at Stanford University and been a Royal Society visitor at the School of Physics, University of Sydney.
He has published over 450 journals and conference papers. Professor Amaratunga was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2004. In 2007, he was awarded the Royal Academy of Engineering Silver Medal for outstanding personal contributions to British engineering.
