Chamindra de Silva, Technology Strategist to the Global Technology Office, has been honored with a Global Indus Technovators Award (GITA)—2007, by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Mass. This award recognizes distinguished innovators of South Asian origin working with cutting-edge technology to make outstanding technological and entrepreneurial contributions. The award facilitates networking among professionals in industry, research and business to accelerate the development of new technologies, and recognizes innovators from specialty areas such as information technology, biotechnology, healthcare and developmental work. Chamindra won his award in the Grassroots Development category. The judges of the event included Mr. Narayana Murthy – Founder and Chief Mentor, Infosys; Mr. S. Ramadorai – CEO, Tata Consultancy Services; and other Directors from Harvard University, MIT and UC Berkeley.
Chamindra is a leader in the Open Source global community, and a Director and Project Lead of the Sahana project, a global disaster management tool that grew out of the 2004 Asian tsunami disaster and the Lanka Software Foundation. Sahana was initially developed to help manage the many coordination issues in response to the Tsunami in Sri Lanka. It has evolved into a generalized disaster management tool and deployed for large-scale disaster relief in Pakistan, Philippines, China, Peru, Bangladesh and New York City. Sahana has received wide recognition for its effectiveness as an open source solution.
Chamindra is also co-founder of the global Humanitarian-ICT Forum, advisor to the H-FOSS Project, and Co-Chair of the W3C EIIF Incubator Group, which works on open source standards and solutions in the humanitarian and emergency response domain. He has published articles in CACM, IEEE, ISCRAM, UNDP IOSN and PeaceIT on the subject.
Chamindra stated: "As much as I value this award, in the humanitarian response domain, awards are not the focus, as we work mainly to make a difference to those in need. A lot of credit for what we have been able to achieve and build upon is thanks to the many passionate volunteers and contributors in Sri Lanka and around the world, who wanted to make a difference by using their skills for the greater good. This includes the many employees of Virtusa and the Sri Lankan Open Source community who actively participated during the Tsunami. I would especially like to take this opportunity to thank all these unsung heroes who have contributed much without asking for anything in return."
We congratulate Chamindra on behalf of the whole Virtusa team for this incredible recognition.