After receiving his BSc. from the University of Sri Lanka and being the recipient of the 1979 UNESCO TEAM Gold Medal for the Best Engineering Student of the Year, he joined John Hopkins University as a Gilman Fellow in 1980. He completed his MA and PhD in a record time of two and a half years, did a one year post-doc at Caltech and was appointed as an Assistant Professor at the Arizona State University in 1984. He had an early tenure and promotion to Associate Professor in 1988, promoted to Professor in 1992 and was appointed as the Director of the Environmental Fluid Dynamics Program 1994. He received the Presidential Young Investigator Award from the White House in 1986, ASU Alumni Distinguished Award for research in 1997, Reiger Distinguished Scholar Award for Environmental Sciences in 2002, William Mong Award in 2004 and was and was elected as a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, 2002 and American Institute of Physics, 2004. His contributions to Science in general are evident from more than 175 papers published in first-rate peer reviewed international journals, hundreds of keynote presentations, uninterrupted funding from a suite of agencies to conduct research. He has supervised 15 PhD and 30 MSc. students ans serves on editorial boards of five international journals.

Since 1985 a host of agencies have funded his research with a total funding exceeding $15 million. Currently he is engaged in the conduct of research in submarine technology, upper atmospheric transport, urban flows, national petroleum reserves, sustainability of cities, air pollution, children’s health and mine countermeasures with twelve different federal and state agencies, an energy utility and a defense contractor supporting his work. He also has collaborative projects with Italy, United Kingdom, Israel, Korea, Hong Kong, China and Sri Lanka.