- Sarath Gunapala
Sarath Gunapala, is a
Sri Lankan solid-state physicist , ChiefScientist and Group Supervisor of theNASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory'sQWIP Program and also a Board Member of QWIP Technologies LLC.Early life
Dr. Gunapala set his mind on being an astronomer or space scientist when he was a schoolboy, being motivated by a lecture given by veteran scientist Prof.
Cyril Ponnamperuma and articles that appeared in Nawayugaya magazine. He received his primary & secondary education atNalanda College Colombo, and entered theUniversity of Colombo in 1975 and passed his special degree inphysics with a first class in 1979. After a short period of working as an assistant lecturer at the same university, he was offered a scholarship to USA for his doctorate.Then he joinedBell Laboratories which was founded byAlexander Graham Bell -inventor of the telephone. He worked there as a scientist for seven years. While working for Bell Laboratories, he developed anIR detector which was capable of attracting the minds at NASA. They invited him to work at NASA, something that had been this Sri Lankans dream since he was just a kid. Since then, for the past 15 years, Dr. Gunapala has been working at JPL-NASA.QWIP technology
"This technology will revolutionize the way we develop new remote sensing instruments," said team leader Dr. Sarath Gunapala and added; "As a result of all our research work in last decade, QWIP technology has culminated as the most favorable highly sensitive
multi-band large formatfocal plane array technology inlong-wavelength infrared region . "Dr. Gunapala has introduced to the world, the "640x512 PixZls
Long-Wavelength Infrared (LWIR)Quantum Dot Infrared Photodetector (QDIP) Focal Plane Array Camera".Publications
References
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NASA
*JPL
*QWIP Technologies LLC
*zoom info
* [http://www.nation.lk/2006/06/25/eyefea3.htm "Reaching for the stars"] SCI TECH compiled by Tharaka Gamage - The Nation on Sunday 25/6/2006
* [http://instrumentsystems.jpl.nasa.gov/people/Gunapala/ "NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory"]
* [http://www.nalanda.sch.lk/content/view/222/85/lang,si/ "Nalanda College 2006 Prize Giving Ceremony"]ee also
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Sri Lanka
*Physics
*Solid-state physics
*Infared
*NASA
*Jet Propulsion Laboratory
*QWIP
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