Prof. (Dr.) Thusitha U. Abeytunga
Professor in Chemistry
Faculty of Science
University of Colombo, Sri Lanka

Thusitha Abeytunga is a senior professor attached to the Department of Chemistry, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. She read for her Ph.D. at the University of Arizona, USA on synthetic organic chemistry. Apart from the regular teaching and research work at the Department of chemistry, she was instrumental in starting the M.Sc. in Applied Organic Chemistry program which created an opportunity for the graduates in Sri Lanka to pursue their postgraduate studies. She supported commercialization of research at the Faculty of Science by establishing Colombo Science and Technology Cell (Cell) at the Faculty of Science. At the University level she worked as the Director at the Operational Technical Secretariat (OTS), under the Higher Education for the Twenty first Century (HETC) project which funded by the World Bank. At present she is working as the Lead Academic Expert on Research and Innovation under the Ministry of Education on the Accelerating Higher Education Expansion and Development (AHEAD) which is an operation funded by the World Bank. Under the AHEAD operation, University Business Linkage (UBL) cells which act as Technology/knowledge transfer offices were established in all state universities in Sri Lanka.

Dr. Christopher Russell,
Director of the Business School,
Christ Church Business School

Prior to joining Canterbury Christ Church, in February 2018, he was at Cardiff Met for fifteen years, where he rose from being a Lecturer in Information Systems to a Principal Lecturer and Head of Department for Accounting, Economics and Finance. Before that he worked in a variety of roles as a Graduate Trainee at Orange and France Télécom R&D and as a researcher at the University of Oulu in Finland. He studied at the universities of Oxford, Aston, Wales and Roehampton.
Key foci of his professional activity have been the development of students’ employability skills and the internationalization of higher education. Together with colleagues at partner education institutions and in industry in the UK, Egypt, South Africa, Ukraine and Vietnam. He has also co-authored CCCU’s Framework for Developing Enterprising and Professional Graduates and the International Strategy.