Eric Hamilton Karunanayake, founding director of the Institute of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Biotechnology at the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka, passed away on 23 May 2025.
Elected a TWAS Fellow in 1995, Karunanayake earned his Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from the University of Ceylon in 1967, followed by a PhD from Imperial College London, and later a diploma in recombinant DNA technology from Uppsala University, Sweden, in 1986.
In 2016, he received the TWAS-ROCASA Regional Award in Building Scientific Institutions at the TWAS Regional Conference in Bangalore, India. His contributions to health-related research and the establishment of a genetic engineering laboratory in Sri Lanka earned him the Kandy Society of Medicine Award in 1995.
He was a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences of Sri Lanka and The New York Academy of Sciences, and served as Chairperson of the National Research Council Sri Lanka.