Prof. Nilanthi de Silva

Professor de Silva obtained her first degree in Medicine (MBBS) from the University of Colombo, and went on to earn a Masters in Medical Parasitology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 1989 and a Doctor of Medicine degree, specializing in Medical Parasitology, from Colombo University’s Postgraduate Institute of Medicine in 1994.

She has lectured at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Kelaniya since 1993, and has held the cadre chair of the Department of Parasitology there since 2003. She has over 100 publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals, with an h-index of 31 on Google Scholar. The main focus of her research has been on soil-transmitted helminth infections, particularly their epidemiology, treatment, and control.

She is an expert advisor on Neglected Tropical Diseases to the World Health Organization, serving both WHO Headquarters and the South East Asia Regional Office in many different capacities since 2000. She has served in a similar advisory capacity to other international entities: Children Without Worms at the Task Force for Global Health in Atlanta, USA; the Partnership for Child Development at Imperial College London; the International Task Force for Disease Eradication at the Carter Centre in Atlanta, USA; and the DeWorm3 project of the British Natural History Museum.