Sisira Siribaddana ([email protected])

Professor Sisira Siribaddana (MBBS MD FCCP FRCP Edin) is the founder professor & chair, Department of Medicine, of the new Faculty of Medicine & Allied Sciences (FMAS) at Rajarata University in North Central Province. He was initially trained as an endocrinologist, studying diabetes, obesity, and metabolic syndrome in Sri Lanka. He was then instrumental in setting up the Wellcome Trust-funded Colombo Twin & Singleton Survey – the first population based twin research in the developing world and Asia – in 1997. He was the programme director from 1998-2003 and has used the cohort to study issues of mental health (particularly its interface with physical health) and alcoholism. He has received several Wellcome Trust grants to look at Sri Lankan bioethics and mental health issues and worked with both the WHO and Sri Lankan government. He received the Sri Lankan Presidential award for research in 2008 and has received 6 awards from the Sri Lanka Medical Association and the Ceylon College of Physicians.

In his current post, Prof. Siribaddana has been instrumental in setting up research and ethical (regulatory) infrastructure, with an active post graduate research programme for the new faculty. He remains actively engaged in research, medical education, ethics, public engagement and dissemination of science. He actively supports research collaboration between alternative and western medicical systems with research collaborations from Ministry of Indigenous Medicine, Nawinna Bandaranake Ayurvedha Research Institute and Universities in Melbourne, Newcastle, and New Zealand.

Prof Siribaddana is leading several healthcare research projects taking place in both major and peripheral hospitals and in the Province’s many rural communities. His background in bioethics and mental health will ensure that this research is done to the highest ethical standards. He is also collaborating with the world class poisoning and envenoming research that has been done by a group of Sri Lankan, Australian, and European researchers in the North Central Province led by South Asian Clinical Toxicology Research Collaboration.

He has published over 100 papers (with 65 papers in pubmed), book chapters and books.