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Interview
Researcher Spotlight: An Interview With Asitha Rathnayake
Reflections on researching as an undergraduate
Tell me a bit about yourself
I am Rathnayake Mudiyanselage Asitha Gayan Bandara Rathnayake (trust me, when I was schooling, this was considered a pretty normal length name!) My family is from a city towards the centre of Sri Lanka called Kurunegala, which is a beautiful, yet not so touristy area.
Some of my best memories were made in Maliyadeva College, Kurunegala, where I went to school for 13 (13 and a half?) years. I did my A/Ls in Mathematics stream in 2014 and got into the University of Moratuwa. There, I became the 21st in a batch of about 725 in our 1st semester exam which gave me the freedom to choose any Engineering field. Because of my personal liking and my family background in construction, I decided to call the ‘Department of Civil Engineering’ my home for the next three and a half years.
Four and a half years later, I have graduated as the 2nd in our batch of 125, worked in the industry for nearly 7 months (in addition to 4 months of industrial training) and is now into my 3rd month as a PhD student at the Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge (for those of you who may have a doubt, I didn’t have to do a…
