Senior Research Professionals

• Nilakshi de Silva, MPA (Princeton) Senior Research Professional, Poverty Impact Monitoring Programme Nilakshi studied economics and politics at Monash University, Australia and has a Masters degree in Public Affairs (MPA) from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, USA. She has over fifteen years of experience working on development issues, including in the public and non-government sectors as well as for multilateral agencies. Interests: Development and public policy, evaluation and impact monitoring

• Nayana Godamunne, MSc (Oxon) Senior Research Professional, Communications and Policy Programme Nayana read Politics and Sociology at the University of Bristol and has a Masters in Forced Migration from the Department of International Development, University of Oxford.  She started her career in the financial sector but moved to work in international development where she has more than 12 years experience working on programme designing, project implementation, policy development and independent consultancy on issues of displacement, livelihood development and gender.  She works on the 'policy aspects' of the Communications and Policy Programme and Co-Leads the Poverty and Vulnerability thematic. Interests: Displacement, resettlement, migration, gender and vulnerable people as well as research uptake and links between research –practice – policy.

• Geetha Mayadunne, Ph.D. (Peradeniya) Senior Research Professional, Poverty Assessment and Measurement Programme Geetha received her Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from the University of Peradeniya.  She specialised in Applied Statistics and Econometrics for her Master’s degrees from the University of Colombo and Monash University, Australia.  Before joining CEPA, Geetha was the Director of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation at the Ministry of Agriculture.  She has over fifteen years of public sector experience in development policy analysis and at the early stages of her career she worked as a Statistician at the Department of Census and Statistics. Interests: Development Policy Analysis, Statistical and Econometric Methods

• Chaturanga Weerasekera, BA (Peradeniya) Senior Professional/Librarian Chaturanga is a Chartered Librarian with over 17 years of professional experience in knowledge dissemination and resource centre management. She is responsible for the overall function of the CEPA Resource Centre including the physical and digital library and dissemination of CEPA publications.  She coordinates off the page information sharing events such as the Book Club and Film Club.  Chaturanga also manages tracking of funding sites for the organisation.