Janaka de Silva

H. Janaka de Silva FRCP is a Sri Lankan physician and academic. He is Senior Professor of Medicine at the University of Kelaniya.[1][2]

Janaka de Silva was educated at Royal College, Colombo and holds degrees from the universities of Colombo and Oxford.[3] 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.[4] He was also Director of the Postgraduate Institute of Medicine (PGIM), University of Colombo,[5] and a member of the University Grants Commission of Sri Lanka. Before becoming its Director he chaired a number of boards in the PGIM,[6] 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.[7]

De Silva’s most influential contributions to research stem from his abiding interest in health problems prevalent in Sri Lanka.[8] He was Chairman of the National Research Council of Sri Lanka from 2013 to 2019.[9] He holds several editorial appointments[10][11] and is on committees in health and research organizations including the WHO, Wellcome Trust and National Institute of Health Research, UK.[12][13][14][15][16]

He was President of the Ceylon College of Physicians in 2004, twenty years after his father, P. T. de Silva.[17] In addition to awards and fellowships from several academic and professional bodies,[18][19] de Silva was conferred the title Vidyajyothi - the highest national honor for science.[20][15]