Chandre Dharma-wardana

Chandre Dharma-wardana is a Sri Lankan-born academic and scientist. A former President of Vidyodaya Campus (now the University of Sri Jayewardenepura), he is currently a Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Université de Montréal. He is also currently a Principal Research scientist at the National Research Council of Canada.

Educated at Aluthgama Vidyalaya, Ananda College and at Royal College, Colombo he earned a BSc (Hon.) from the University of Ceylon in 1961. He earned his PhD from The University of Cambridge, (Corpus Christi College).

Joining the university as a senior lecturer, he was later appointed as Professor of Chemistry. From 1974 to 1975 he was appointed as President of Vidyodaya Campus. During this period he also held associate appointments with the Université de Paris, Orsay via the CECAM institute, associated with the French Atomic Energy Commission and the CNRS. Currently, he is affiliated with the National Research Council of Canada (NRCC) and the Université de Montréal, and works on various topics in the quantum theory, nanotechnology and also warm dense matter.

Professor Dharma-wardana has worked on a wide variety of scientific topics, where the unifying theme is the application of the quantum theory, usually to many-body problems. His work focused on quantum theory, statistical mechanics, and solid state physics associated with Raman scattering, energy-relaxation and phonons in nanostructures, quantum Hall effect, the physics of nanotubes and graphene. He worked on a variety of topics such as surface passivisation, quantum dots, organic light-emitting diodes and related nanostructures, energy-relaxation etc., in collaboration with researchers at the NRC, Universities or research institutions in Montreal, Toronto, British Columbia, Livermore, Los Alamos and Paris. A main area of Prof. Dharma-wardana's research has been in many-body theory and plasma physics, often in collaboration with François Perrot of the French Atomic Energy commission. Thus the construction of the classical-map scheme for quantum systems is a ground-breaking work, leading to the formulation of the classical-map hyper-netted chain method (CHNC). This method has led to a new approach for the evaluation of properties of Fermi liquids and warm-dense matter. His previous work on the density-functional theory of dense plasmas is now a well-established method in the field. It has led to the development of methods for the first-principles evaluation of the equation of state, and the transport properties of dense plasmas. His contributions to the energy-relaxation of hot electrons in semiconductors and also in plasmas, have presented a new direction in the theory of non-equilibrium states of two-temperature charged fluids. His paper elucidating the unusual thermal conductivity of clathrates still attracts many citations. His contributions to surface science (e.g. reconstruction of the sulphur-passivated InP surface), nanotechnology, phonons in semiconductor structures, quasi-periodic systems etc., are well known and are contained in over 200 research publications. Dharma-wardana currently serves as a Principal Research scientist at the National Research Council of Canada, and is a Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Université de Montréal. His most recent book on physics is entitled A Physicist's View of Matter and Mind, published in 2013 by World Scientific.

See also Whose Who, Canada.

Professor Dharma-wardana has also contributed to development studies in Sri Lanka, and founded the 'Bachelor of Development Studies (B. Dev.) degree during his tenure as the President of Vidyodaya University. He was invited to talk about a web site of place names maintained by him, at a conference organised by the Royal Asiatic Society of Sri Lanka. He also maintains a website dealing with the ethno-botany of plants in Sri Lanka, where the Sinhala, Sanskrit and Tamil names of the systematic botanical (i.e., Latin) names are followed up with details of ethnographic interest. Prof. Dharmawardana heads a project (WC4SL) for delivering free wheel chairs to rural hospitals and disabled people of Sri Lanka; it has operated since the end of the Eelam wars in 2009.

Professor Dharma-wardana has recently engaged himself in trying to unravel the origins of the mysterious kidney disease that has appeared (since 1992) in the North Central Province (NCP) of Sri Lanka, and now rising to near epidemic proportions, killing thousands of people. The disease has similarities to Danubian endemic familial nephropathy or DEFN. The cause of the disease is unknown and hence it is called chronic kidney disease of unknown aetiology (CKDU) by medical scientists. A paper authored by him and three other well-known Sri Lankan scientists appeared in the journal Environmental Health and Geochemistry setting the trend for a new paradigm regarding CKDU.