September 20, 2016
Dissanayake elected to fellow status in national engineering society
Sunanda Dissanayake, professor of civil engineering at Kansas State University, has been elected to fellow status by the American Society of Civil Engineers.
The prestigious honor is held by fewer than 3.5 percent of society members, and is awarded to those who "have made celebrated contributions and developed creative solutions that change lives around the world."
Dissanayake joined the civil engineering department at K-State in 2002 as an assistant professor. She was tenured and promoted to associate professor in 2008, and became a full professor in 2014. She is currently serving as the department's graduate program director.
She completed a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka; a master's degree in transportation engineering from the Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand; and a doctorate in civil engineering from the University of South Florida.
In 2011, Dissanayake received the prestigious Fulbright Award for a sabbatical leave, and served as a senior scholar for the University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka. Her research focuses on studies related to solving applied and practical problems related to transportation engineering, with particular emphasis on traffic operations and safety of the highway mode.
She was recently appointed as a high-end foreign expert in traffic safety and as a member of the First Advisory Board for the Joint International Research Lab of Transportation Safety at Tongji University in Shanghai, China.