Language Technology

Mr. Pushpananda Ekanayaka has been designing letters of the Sinhala script, in different shapes from the time he was a young child. The first Sinhala font Mr. Ekanayaka designed was Malithi. In 1998, Mr. Ekanayaka released 10 fonts which he had developed, but these did not include a text typeface font. There was a necessity for a text font and consequently Mr. Ekanayake designed the hugely popular Sinhala ASCII font FM Abhaya. Thereafter, it was necessary to design and develop Sinhala fonts of various styles intended for different purposes. Consequently, he designed and developed 12 Sinha...

Mr. Balachandran Gnanasekaraiyer has been responsible for key developments in the arena of ICT in Local Languages. As a Consultant to the Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA) of Sri Lanka, in 2006 he commenced working on a Tamil keyboard layout to be standardized. He later worked on developing the draft Tamil ICT standard which encompassed the keyboard layout for Tamil with keying-in sequences, encoding for Tamil characters aligned to the Unicode standard and a Collation Sequence for Tamil. These were included in the draft standard which ICTA proposed to the Sri Lanka Stand...

Mr. S. Shanmugarajah (Shan) is an experienced IT professional who has been practicing in the software industry for the past 19 years. He specializes in mobile technology, on which he has focused for the past decade. He is thoroughly conversant in telecommunication software development with skills in Android, iOS .NET, Java and middleware. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering Degree in Computer Science, from the Bharathidasan University, Trichy, India. He is presently the CEO and Chief Architect of mBrain Technologies. Shan was an External Consultant in ICT in Local Languages at the ICT Agen...

Mr. Rohan Manamudali, together with Mr. Sampath Godamunne co-founded Science Land Corporation (Pvt) Ltd, in 1994 a Company solely dedicated to local language computing. Mr. Manamudali and Mr. Samapth Godamunne were co-developers tri-lingual word processor “THIBUS”, which made a huge impact on local language computing in Sri Lanka. This was a time when many people were reluctant to use computers due to not being conversant in English. Language was a huge impediment in getting people to use computers in Sri Lanka. “Thibus” filled this gap, and people were able to use word processors in Sinha...

Ms. Dineesha Ediriweera is at present a Senior System Engineer at Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd. (ANCL). She has a B.Sc. and a M.Sc. in Computer Science and Engineering, both from the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. She is also a Corporate Member of the Institute of Engineers of Sri Lanka (IESL) and a Corporate Member of the Computer Society of Sri Lanka (CSSL). Ms. Ediriweera designed and developed software for the classified advertisement system and the digital advertisement system of ANCL. She also designed and developed software for the Sinhala Collation Algorithm for the cla...

Mr. ST Nandasara is a lecturer at the University of Colombo School of Computing (UCSC) and the Coordinator of the Advanced Digital Media Technology Center at UCSC. Mr. Nandasara graduated from the University of Colombo in 1979. From 1983, Mr. Nandasara underwent three years of postgraduate training in Statistics, Computer Applications and Computer Science at the University of Reading and University of Essex in the UK. He also completed a course of instruction in “Computer Applications and Statistics, and Computer Science”, under the British Government’s Technical Cooperation Programs. A k...

Mr. Harsha Wijayawardhana is the Chief Operating Officer of Theekshana (a company managed by the University of Colombo School of Computing, UCSC) and is also the Director/CEO of a nascent company on Internet of Things (IoT) in Sri Lanka. Mr. Harsha Wijayawardhana who is an alumnus of the University of Miami, USA has more than 25 years of experience in ICT. Mr. Wijayawardhana is a Fellow of the British Computer Society. He was also involved in developing the Software Development Unit (SDU) of the UCSC. He and his team at SDU have been an integral part of developing software for the Governme...

Dr. Ruvan Weerasinghe has a first degree in Mathematics and Statistics from the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. He ventured into the field of IT and Computer Science through postgraduate study in the UK. Since then Dr. Weerasinghe has been involved in many facets of the ICT industry. He started with small scale projects and feasibility studies for State Sector organizations. Dr. Ruvan Weerasinghe has been part of the pioneering bodies which were instrumental in the introduction of the Internet to Sri Lanka; through both the Lanka Educational and Research Network (LEARN) and also...