Professor I. A. U. Nimal Gunatilleke

Professor I. A. U. Nimal Gunatilleke is Emeritus Professor of Botany at the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, where he has spent the greater part of his academic career advancing research in tropical ecology, biodiversity conservation, and forest science. He holds a BSc (Hons.) in Botany with Chemistry from the University of Ceylon and a PhD in Microbial Genetics and Biochemistry from the University of Cambridge, England.

He joined the University of Peradeniya in 1977 and rose to become Professor of Botany in 1989, a position he held until his retirement in 2013, when he was conferred the title of Emeritus Professor. During his tenure, he served as Head of the Department of Botany and Chairman of the Board of Study in Plant Sciences at the Postgraduate Institute of Science. His scholarly output spans over one hundred publications in refereed international journals and more than twenty-five book chapters and books. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences of Sri Lanka.

Among his many honours are the Sultan Qaboos Award of UNESCO for environmental preservation (1997), the Presidential Titular Award Vidya Nidhi (2005), a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar Award, a Charles Bullard Research Fellowship at Harvard University, and Senior Fellowship of the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science. He has served on national expert bodies including the National Experts Committee on Biodiversity, the Wildlife Research Committee, and the Research Advisory Panel of the National Science Foundation of Sri Lanka, and represented Sri Lanka in the preparation of the Cartagena Biosafety Protocol.