Academic
collaborations.

Prof. V. K. Samaranayake

Mentorship and institution-building

Prof. Samaranayake’s mentorship shaped much of Harsha’s public-interest computing work. Their association included election computerisation, the Commissioner of Elections intranet, the Kothmale Internet Community Radio initiative, the Virtual Village programme, Sinhala computing and the work that developed around UCSC and its Software Development Unit.

Harsha contributed the chapter Kothmale Internet Program to Virtual Village: Recollection of nine years of ICT4D in Sri Lanka to Partners in Progress, the 2007 felicitation volume honouring Prof. Samaranayake. The chapter records the evolution of two landmark rural ICT initiatives and preserves part of their shared institutional history.

Partners in Progress record →   Landmark projects →

Prof. P. W. Epasinghe

National ICT and Sinhala-language initiatives

Harsha worked in the wider national ICT and local-language ecosystem in which Prof. P. W. Epasinghe played a leading role. Prof. Epasinghe, then Chairman of ICTA, participated in the 2009 launch of Harsha’s book Numerations in the Sinhala Language, a work bringing historical Sinhala number systems into contemporary technical and public discussion.

The partnership represents a shared concern with making information technology meaningful and accessible in Sri Lanka’s own languages, while connecting institutional policy, technical standards and public scholarship.

Numeration archive →   Book and publication record →

Prof. J. B. Disanayake

Language scholarship joined with digital standards

Harsha and Prof. J. B. Disanayake collaborated at the meeting point of Sinhala scholarship and computing. They were among the contributors to An Introduction to Unicode for Sinhala Characters (2003), alongside Prof. V. K. Samaranayake, S. T. Nandasara and A. R. Weerasinghe.

Prof. Disanayake also reviewed Numerations in the Sinhala Language and discussed the significance of Harsha’s evidence concerning a historical Sinhala zero. Their association helped connect linguistic expertise with the exact character, writing-system and historical questions required for Sinhala to function reliably in digital environments.

Publications →   Sinhala numeration research →

Prof. Nalin de Silva

A dialogue on the Sinhala zero

Harsha’s association with Prof. Nalin de Silva developed into a public intellectual dialogue on Sinhala numeration, zero and the history of mathematical ideas. Their Sinhala-language online lecture brought Harsha’s documentary and technical research before a wider audience.

The programme was introduced by Nalaka Jayasena and also involved Mr. Piyadasa. It gave space to examine the Sinhala zero not simply as an isolated symbol, but in relation to indigenous notation, language, knowledge traditions and the interpretation of historical evidence.

Watch the prominent Sinhala Zero lecture →

Prof. Eric Karunanayake

Building the digital foundations for molecular biology

Harsha’s close association with Prof. Eric Hamilton Karunanayake extended for roughly three decades. It began in the latter part of 1996 when Prof. Samaranayake sent Harsha to help connect the Apple Macintosh used for DNA sequencing at the Institute of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (IBMBB) to the Internet.

The collaboration expanded into the design of high-performance computing facilities for DNA sequencing, the purchase and deployment of specialist computers, and a fibre network with VLANs. Harsha helped establish a fibre link between UCSC and IBMBB, designed the institute’s first website, and his Software Development Unit team designed the IBMBB crest incorporating the DNA double helix. He also worked with Prof. Eric and Prof. Ruvan Weerasinghe on the concept of a joint MSc in Bioinformatics.

The relationship joined Harsha’s own background in biochemistry with networking and software engineering, helping create practical infrastructure for emerging computational biology in Sri Lanka.

TWAS memorial biography →