Indira Samarasekera

Indira Vasanti Samarasekera,middle name according to LCNAF CIP data OC (born April 11, 1952) is the 12th and current President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Alberta. Succeeding Roderick Fraser on July 1, 2005, she was the first female president of any university in Alberta.

Biography

Samarasekara was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka, of Tamil descent, and was married to a Sinhalese. She received her B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Sri Lanka in 1974 and an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Davis in 1976; she immigrated to Canada in 1977, where she received her Ph.D. in Metallurgical Engineering at the University of British Columbia in 1980.

That year, Samarasekara began work in the Department of Metals and Materials Engineering at UBC with a focus on the continuous casting and hot rolling of steel. In 2000 she was appointed UBC's Vice-President Research.

In 2002, she was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. She was appointed to the board of directors for Scotiabank in 2008.

Controversy

In a interview with the Edmonton Journal on October 21,...
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