Professor Visakan Kadirkamanathan

Biography

I was born in Jaffna, Sri Lanka and had my early education there. Having spent my entire school career at St Johns College, Jaffna, I attended the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka briefly before moving to the UK. As a Christ's College Scholar, I graduated with a first-class degree in electrical and information sciences from the Engineering Department at Cambridge University, followed by a PhD in information engineering from the same institution. For the latter, I was awarded the Lord Mountbatten Memorial Scholarship from Christ's College.

My first academic appointment was as Lecturer in the Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering at the University of Sheffield in January 1993 following brief postdoctoral research positions at Cambridge and Surrey Universities. During the last few years, I was promoted to Senior Lecturer, then Reader and in 2007 to the position of Professor of Signal and Information Processing.

From April 2009 to August 2014, I had the privilege of being the Head of Department during which time this unique department has seen a significant expansion. In July 2012 I assumed the role of Director of the Rolls-Royce supported University Technology Centre in Control and Systems Engineering.