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Sri Lanka ICT pioneer passes away
#18 - 0--emndb--Sri Lanka ICT pioneer passes away--2007-06-07 13:46:40
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A pioneer of Sri Lanka's information technology
sector, who headed two government agencies dealing with ICT and also
founded a computer faculty in Sri Lanka has passed away.
- Professor V. K. Samaranayake, 68, had died in Sweden, Wednesday, a
spokesperson for Sri Lanka's ICT Agency of which he was chairman, told
LBO. The ICT industry in Sri Lanka lost its most valued member after
Professor V.K. Samaranayake passed away on Tuesday, 06th June 2007 aged
68.
Samaranayake was the Chairman of the Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka from 2004.
He was also the Emeritus Professor of Computer Science of the
University of Colombo and founder Director, University of Colombo
School of Computing (UCSC) of the University of Colombo.
He served the University of Colombo for a continuous period of 43
years since his first appointment in 1961 immediately following his
graduation from the same University.
Samaranayake had founded the Department of Statistics and Computer
Science (DSCS) and of the Institute of Computer Technology (ICT) of the
University of Colombo which were then merged as the UCSC in 2002.
A Fellow of the Harvard Information Infrastructure Project and the
National Centre for Digital Government of the Kennedy School of
Government, Harvard University, he was a Visiting Fellow of the Digital
Vision Program of Stanford University, USA in 2005.
Samaranayake served the Council for Information Technology
(CINTEC), the apex National agency for IT in Sri Lanka as its Chairman
for a period of 12 years, and had helped shape Sri Lanka's IT olicy,
legal infrastructure and e-commerce, the ICT Agency said.
The Government of Sri Lanka has also awarded the national honour Vidya Jyothi to Samaranayake in 1998.
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