Vice Chancellor’s Award for Research Excellence 2019 – Faculty of Medicine
Professor Vithanage Pujitha Wickramasinghe
Professor Vithanage Pujitha Wickramasinghe is a Senior Professor in Paediatrics in the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Colombo. He is an Honorary Consultant Paediatrician at the Lady Ridgeway Hospital for Children in Colombo. He graduated MBBS with Second Class Upper Division Honours from the University of Colombo with distinctions in Biochemistry and Physiology in 1996. Thereafter he specialized in Paediatrics and obtained his MD from the Postgraduate Institute of Medicine in 2002. He researched on nutrition and obtained his PhD in 2010 from the University of Colombo. He received training in Clinical Nutrition at University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. He also received training in management of Post-Liver Transplant Children at Bergamo, Italy. He is one of the leading undergraduate and postgraduate trainers and examiners in Paediatrics in the country. His special field of research is childhood nutrition, growth and body composition. He is the recipient of grants worth more than 100 million rupees from local as well as international grant organisations such as the National Science Foundation, the National Research Council, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Gates Foundation. He has supervised 11 PhD, 3 MPhil and 15 MD students. He has over 100 publications in peer-reviewed indexed journals, with an H-index of 18, and over 1,250 citations. He has also read more than 100 conference papers, and written 22 book chapters and published 7 books. He has delivered more than 100 invited lectures and 8 orations. He has contributed extensively to technical manuals of the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education. He was the chairperson of the Editorial Board for development of Health and Physical Education School Text Books for Grade 6 through 11 both in Sinhala and in English from 2014 to 2018. He has received 29 awards for research including the University of Colombo Research Award in 2006, President’s Awards for Research in 2008, 2013, and 2014; and the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Directors Award for the Most Outstanding Senior Researcher in Health Sciences in 2018. This brief citation illustrates the professional life spanning 24 years of an academic, clinician, and researcher par excellence. Vice Chancellor, I have the honour of presenting to you Prof. Vithanage Pujitha Wickramasinghe for the conferment of the Faculty of Medicine Vice Chancellor’s Award for Research Excellence for the year 2019.