Honorary Doctorate awarded to Naturalist Kelum Nalinda Manamendra-Arachchi
Source:Dailynews
The Council of the University of Sri Jayewardenepura decided to award an Honorary Doctorate to renowned Naturalist Kelum Nalinda Manamendra-Arachchi at the 48th convocation on October 23, 2022.
Kelum is a specialist on Biodiversity Conservation, Taxonomy, Biogeography, Zooarchaeology, Paleontology, Herpetology, Ichthyology, and Osteology.
There are over 110 publications in the world’s most influential journals and with over 2,000 citations to his name. Kelum serves as a Visiting Lecturer at the Postgraduate Institute of Archeology of the University of Kelaniya.
He has been an Amphibian Specialist at IUCN SSC Amphibian Specialist Group since 1996.
He has also described more than 70 new species of amphibians, reptiles, freshwater fishes, and mammals in Sri Lanka. He received many national and international grants for research projects for the last two decades. He has done many international collaborations, including the National History Museum of London, National History Museum of Paris, Base Museum of Switzerland, Chicago Field Museum of USA, Zoological Survey of India (Chennai and Calcutta), Chulalongkorn University of Thailand, and Raffles Museum and the National University of Singapore during last quarter century.
Recognizing his contribution to knowledge enhancement, Kelum was awarded by the International Institute for Species Exploration, Arizona State University. He is a Presidential Awards winner for Taxonomy and Zoo-Archaeology in 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2009.
He received the Top Ten Award for discovering remarkable new species in 2008 and honouring the service to taxonomy and biodiversity conservation of the last 30 years, two species, viz.
Puntius kelumi and Calotes manamendrai were named after Kelum’s name (patronymic) by the founders of those species.
