The Minister of Plantation Industries Navin Dissanayake has appointed Rohan Pethiyagoda to chair the Sri Lanka Tea Board. Pethiyagoda is a well-known Sri Lankan businessman and government officer in the Ministry of Tourism and Sports.
An author, he is recognized for his work in the environment and biodiversity fields and has initiated a project to convert abandoned tea gardens into natural forest cover. He is a research associate of the Australian Museum and is also an editor of the Asian Freshwater Fish section in the journal Zootaxa. Pethiyagoda has written several books in addition to some 60 research papers in scientific literature.
He completed his secondary education at St Thomas’s College, Mount Lavinia and B.Sc. in Electrical and Electronics Engineering, at King’s College, University of London in 1977. He also completed his M.Phil. In Biomedical Engineering, University of Sussex in 1980.