Suresh De Mel
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Sabreena Niles
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Priyan Dias
Priyan Dias had a succession of temporary A/Level mathematics teachers at his school, but he chose largely not to attend private tuition classes; and was hence quite surprised that he was ranked very high in the A/Level mathematics stream results. Although he wanted to enter the Peradeniya University engineering faculty, he was forced to enter what later became the University of Moratuwa, due to an administrative fiat. As a student, he was both quite active in both Youth for Christ and what would later become FOCUS, but he did end up graduating in 1980 with rather good results. Although offered a position on the teaching staff at Moratuwa, he postponed the acceptance of that offer by a year, in order to serve as a ‘FOCUS’ staffworker among university students. He went to Imperial College, London to read for a PhD, which he completed in 1986; albeit with some regrets that the thesis topic he chose was a rather ‘safe’ one that did not stretch him as much as he would have liked. He returned to the staff of Moratuwa University, from which he retired in September 2021 as a Senior Professor in Civil Engineering. He thoroughly enjoyed the academic freedom he had as a university teacher, with involvements in teaching, research, administration, consulting work, learned society activities, voluntary service and a little bit of advocacy through his writing in the print media. He saw his teaching career as one of contributing to social upliftment of students through the free education system; and his research career as one of wanting to ‘put Sri Lanka on the map’, both through international publications and the sending of his best students to prestigious universities overseas for their own PhDs. Because of some of his perceived deficiencies in mainstream engineering competencies, he has pursued a broad spectrum of research, for example encompassing systems approaches, machine learning techniques and engineering philosophy. His consulting practice enhanced both his teaching and research while solving real life engineering problems; and also brought him some additional income. His highest administrative roles were limited to ‘middle management’ in the university system – Head of the Civil Engineering Department (2007-2010) and (the inaugural) Director of Research for the university (2014-2017). He is currently the Sri Lanka Representative for the Institution of Structural Engineers, U.K. and the President of the National Academy of Sciences of Sri Lanka. Since his retirement, he has been employed on a part time basis at the Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology (SLIIT) – he is convinced that Sri Lankan higher education needs both public and private providers. He is also a Board Member of Habitat for Humanity Sri Lanka, and has previously been both a member and chair of the FOCUS Administrative Council. He is also on the preaching team at St. Paul’s church, Milagiriya. His wife Shanthi retired a while ago after being Principal of Methodist College, Colombo for 13 years. They have two adult sons.