Rohan Abeyaratne
Encyclopedia
Rohan Abeyaratne is a Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...

n born American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 academic and engineer
Engineer
An engineer is a professional practitioner of engineering, concerned with applying scientific knowledge, mathematics and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical problems. Engineers design materials, structures, machines and systems while considering the limitations imposed by practicality,...

. The Quentin Berg Professor of Mechanics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...

 (MIT), he is currently the CEO & Director of the Singapore–MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (the "SMART" Centre) and formerly the Head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT.

Educated at the prestigious Royal College Colombo
Royal College Colombo
The Royal College of Colombo was founded in January 1835 in Colombo. It is considered to be the leading Public School in Sri Lanka...

, he went on to gain his BSc
BSC
BSC is a three-letter abbreviation that may refer to:Science and technology* Bachelor of Science , an undergraduate degree* Base Station Controller, part of a mobile phone network; see: Base Station subsystem...

 in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Ceylon
University of Ceylon
The University of Ceylon was the only university in Sri Lanka from 1942 until 1972. It had several constituent campuses at various locations around Sri Lanka. The University of Ceylon Act No. 1 of 1972, replaced it with the University of Sri Lanka which existed from 1973 to 1978. In 1978 it was...

 in 1975 where he won the E.O.E. Pereira Gold Medal. He went on to gain his MSc
MSC
- Computers:* Mario Strikers Charged* Microsoft Common Console Document, file for the Microsoft Management Console* Microelectronics Support Centre* Microsoft Corporation* MIDI Show Control* Message Sequence Chart...

 and PhD
PHD
PHD may refer to:*Ph.D., a doctorate of philosophy*Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*PHD finger, a protein sequence*PHD Mountain Software, an outdoor clothing and equipment company*PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...

 from the California Institute of Technology
California Institute of Technology
The California Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Pasadena, California, United States. Caltech has six academic divisions with strong emphases on science and engineering...

 in 1976 and 1979 respectively.

Abeyaratne was Head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT from 2001 to 2008. In 2008 the Governing Board of the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) Centre http://smart.mit.edu/ appointed him as its CEO/Director, a position he has held since 2009. The SMART Centre is MIT's first Institutional research centre located outside Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Abeyaratne received the MacVicar Fellowship, MIT’s highest award for education in 2000; the Quentin Berg Professorship in 2001; the Daniel C. Drucker Medal from ASME in 2010, as well as its Fellowship in 1998. In 1996 he was made a Fellow of the American Academy of Mechanics and later was elected as its President.

Among Abeyaratne's publications are a book co-authored with J.K. Knowles, Evolution of Phase Transitions: a Continuum
Theory, Cambridge University Press, 2006 http://www.cambridge.org/gb/knowledge/isbn/item1161552/?site_locale=en_GB; and a free e-book entitled Lecture Notes on The Mechanics of Elastic Solids: Volume 1: A Brief Review of Some Mathematical Preliminaries, 2006, downloadable from http://web.mit.edu/abeyaratne/lecture$\_$notes.html.
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