Vijaya Kumar

Vijaya Kumar is Senior Professor of Chemistry at the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. He was educated at the University of Ceylon and Magdalen College, University of Oxford, where he worked on steroid chemistry for his doctorate. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, Sri Lanka and a recipient of the Presidential Award for Scientific Achievement. He is the Sri Lankan representative on the UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development (UNCSTD) and was elected Chairman of the Commission for its Sixth Session (2003).

He has been a member of the Board of Management of the National Science Foundation and the Council for Information Technology and the Chairman of its Committee on Computer Education. He has worked in Universities and research institutes in Canada, Sweden, Germany and Thailand and India. His research interests are in Natural Products Chemistry, Chemical Ecology, Agricultural Biotechnology and in aspects of science policy concerning developing countries. He has published widely in the above fields with over 170 papers to his credit.