Director – Life Sciences

Mrs. Champa K. Dissanayake currently serves as the Director of the Life Sciences Division and Acting Director of Radiation Protection Technical Services. She obtained a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture Degree from the University of Ruhuna in 1993. She joined the Atomic Energy Authority as a Scientific Officer in 1995.

She obtained her Master of Philosophy Degree in Nuclear science from the University of Colombo in 2010.In 2016 she was promoted as the Deputy Director – Food and Agriculture, after serving as a Senior Scientific Officer since 2004.

She obtained Six Months fellowship training that the FAO/IAEA Agriculture and Biotechnology Laboratory in Austria in the field of soil sciences and plant nutrition in year 2000. In 2006 she worked as a temporary staff member in the Regional Cooperative Agreement Regional Office (RCARO) in Korea. She has also upgraded her knowledge by participating in several International training programs, workshops, fellowships, scientific visits and meetings related to nuclear technology applications in food and agriculture organized by the IAEA.

She has more than 23 years of service at the institute and made a great contribution towards the success of the Institute. During her career, she has been engaged as the Project Counterpart of many National Technical Co-operation (TC) projects supported by the IAEA and she has functioned as the National Projects Coordinator for several IAEA Regional Technical Cooperation projects conducted under the Regional co-operative Agreements (RCA) in the Asia – Pacific region since 2008. She also functioned as the Chief Scientific Investigator/Second Chief Scientific Investigator/collaborative scientist of several Coordinated Research Projects (CRPs) assisted by IAEA providing opportunities for students to complete their post graduate research programs under the activities of R & D work of these projects. She took a leading role in establishing the Stable Isotope Analytical Laboratory at SLAEB which serves as the first IRMS laboratory in Sri Lanka.
She has engaged in Research & Development work on the development of environmentally friendly plant growth promoter which was implemented under radiation processing section of SLAEB. This product won the first prize under the environmental category at the “Sahasak Nimaum” 2014, the National Invention Exhibition organized the Sri Lanka Inventors Commission. The work carried out as the NPC of IAEA Project RAS 5055 on “ Soil erosion assessment using Fallout Radionuclide Technique” has been selected as one of the TC best practices by the IAEA.