UAPB boasts new teacher for agricultural engineering

Anura Rathnayake has been appointed assistant professor of agricultural engineering for the College of Arkansas at Pine Bluff Division of Agriculture.

Collectively with educating packages in power and equipment and agricultural manufacturing methods, Rathnayake is tasked with difficult UAPB agriculture majors to design, develop and enhance The subsequent period of agricultural gear, equipment and mechanics, enhancement gear, power trains and hydraulics, Based mostly on a information launch.

He Shall be anticipated to Take part in curriculum enhancement, scholar advisement, internship supervision, enterprise collaboration, scholar recruitment, evaluation and The event and supply of enterprise teaching packages. Furthermore, He’ll Search for grant alternatives and Take part in campus governance and group work togetherment alternatives.

Aside from common educational actions, Rathnayake will work together in evaluation and Extension programming in agricultural know-how, particularly for small and minority farms Inside the southern area.

Rathnayake joins UAPB with 18 years of expertise in educating and evaluation Inside the fields of agricultural, mechanical and manufacturing engineering. Most recently, he labored as a evaluation affiliate On The center for Precision And automated Agricultural Systems, Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extension Middle at Washington State College at Prosser, Wash. In 2016, he started Engaged on The identical institute as a visiting Fulbright scholar and adjunct school member, Based mostly on The discharge.

His evaluation at Washington State College focused on precision agriculture tasks, together with spraying methods integration and evaluation, variable price spray know-how, various pest administration approaches, pesticide spray drift measurements and mitigation utilized sciences.

From 2016 to 2017, he was a visiting evaluation fellow On the Queensland College of Technology’s Faculty of Mechanical, Medical and Course of Engineering in Brisbane, Australia, the place he labored on digital picture correlation stpricegies for thermo-elastic stress evaluation of composite supplies. He labored for Greater than 10 years as a senior lecturer Inside the Division of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering On the College of Ruhuna in Galle, Sri Lanka, serving As a Outcome of the prime of the department for Greater than 4 years.

Rathnayake earned a bachelor’s diploma in mechanical/industrial engineering from the College of Pperioddeniya in Kandy, Sri Lanka. In 2007, he earned a doctoral diploma in optical sensing from Saitama College in Saitama, Japan. His doctoral evaluation focused on The equipment of a novel optical sensing method (statistical interferometry) for monitoring exact-time plant progress dynamics in nanoscale.

He has authored a quantity of journal articles, print and on-line publications and reveals. His honors embrace the Fulbright Superior Research and Lecturing Award by the U.S. Division of State, the Endeavour Postdoctoral Research Fellowship from the Division of Education and Training in Australia, IMechE Instructional Award from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in The united kingdom and the Presidential Research Award for Scientific Publications by the Presidential Secretariat and Nationwide Research Council of Sri Lanka. He additionally acquired a scholarship from The japanese authorities for his doctoral research and a scholarship from the Asian Development Financial institution for his graduate research.

Rathnayake was licensed as a chartered mechanical engineer by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in The united kingdom and by the Institution of Engineers in Sri Lanka. He is a member of the American Society of Agricultural and Organic Engineers.