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Biography
H. Janaka de Silvais a Sri Lankan physician and academic. He is Senior Professor of Medicine at the University of Kelaniya.
Janaka de Silva was educated at Royal College, Colombo and holds degrees from the universities of Colombo and Oxford. He had his higher specialist clinical training at the John Radcliffe Hospital.
De Silva succeeded Carlo Fonseka as Dean of Medicine at Kelaniya, a post he held for nine years. He was also Director of the Postgraduate Institute of Medicine (PGIM), University of Colombo, and a member of the University Grants Commission of Sri Lanka. Before becoming its Director he chaired a number of boards in the PGIM, where he and colleagues established the first formal training programme for gastroenterologists in Sri Lanka. Together with Kemal Deen and a few others he set up a liver transplant service at the Colombo North Teaching Hospital.
De Silva’s most influential contributions to research stem from his abiding interest in health problems prevalent in Sri Lanka. He was Chairman of the National Research Council of Sri Lanka from 2013 to 2019. He holds several editorial appointments and is on committees in health and research organizations including the WHO, Wellcome Trust and National Institute of Health Research, UK.
He was President of the Ceylon College of Physicians in 2004, twenty years after his father, P. T. de Silva. In addition to awards and fellowships from professional bodies, de Silva was conferred the title Vidyajyothi - the highest national honor for science.