Deputy Director/PGIM
Professor Senaka Rajapakse graduated from the Colombo Medical faculty in 1993 with first class honours and distinctions in physiology, biochemistry, microbiology, pathology, parasitology, pharmacology, forensic medicine, paediatrics and medicine, winning 16 medals and awards including the Sir Andrew Caldecott Medal for the final MBBS. He joined the department of Clinical Medicine in 1996 as lecturer in medicine, and completed his MD in the University of Colombo in 1999 and the MRCP(UK) in 2003. In 2003, having completed postgraduate training overseas in critical care medicine he was board certified as a specialist in general internal medicine, and was promoted to senior lecturer. Since 2003 he has been an honorary consultant physician in the University Medical Unit, National Hospital, Colombo, and is an examiner at postgraduate exams in the PGIM and the MRCP(UK) examination. He is a Fellow of the Ceylon College of Physicians, the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, and the American College of Physicians.
He was promoted to Professor by merit in 2009. Professor Rajapakse has held many posts in the University of Colombo; he was Head of the Department of Clinical Medicine from 2009-2010 during which time he played an important role in further developing the research culture in the department. He was Director, Local Technical Secretariat, IRQUE Project from 2007-2010. He established the Virtual Learning Centre in the Faculty of Medicine in 2005 and has played a pivotal role in the development of e-learning in medicine. He has also contributed substantially to the University in many other ways, such as corporate and strategic planning, quality assurance, web development, and the IRQUE and HETC projects.
Professor Rajapakse has diverse research interests, covering many areas of general medicine, toxicology, tropical medicine and infectious diseases, critical care, nephrology, geriatrics, psychological medicine and medical education. He has numerous publications in refereed international journals including the Lancet, Heart, Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, Clinical Toxicology, Malaria Journal, Stroke, Medical Teacher, and many others. Over the period considered for this award i.e., 2009-2011, he published 46 papers in refereed local and international journals as the lead author, and over 20 abstracts. He has published several books has authored many multimedia publications. He is also the founding editor of the Sri Lanka Journal of Critical Care and the International Journal of Critical Illness & Injury Science, and serves on the editorial board of many international journals. He supervises several masters and doctoral research students and has received research grants from the NSF and NRF.
He has received many awards including several Presidential Awards for research, the University Award for Excellence in Research in 2002, the Ceylon College of Physicians Young Physicians Award, the E.M. Wijerama Award for Research, and many others for presentations at scientific conferences.
Professor Rajapakse continues to foster high quality research in medicine, and his current main research focus is on the pathogenesis of leptospirosis, through a series of collaborative projects with the IBMBB.
Recent Comments