Dr. Manula Pathirana joined the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) in Fall 2022. At VMI, he teaches General Physics, Classical Mechanics, Fundamentals of Physics, Programming, and Data Analysis. He earned his B.Sc. (Special) Degree with First Class Honors in Physics from the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, in 2009. He later completed his first M.S. degree in Sustainable Environment and Energy Systems at Middle East Technical University in 2014, where his work focused on low-power VLSI design under the supervision of Dr. Ali Muhtaroglu. He then earned a second M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Virginia in 2016, where he studied power converter modeling for energy harvesting applications under Dr. Benton Calhoun. In 2016, Dr. Pathirana joined Old Dominion University to pursue his graduate studies in physics. He earned an M.S. in Physics in 2018 and a Ph.D. in Physics in 2021. His doctoral research, conducted under the supervision of Dr. Alexander Gurevich, focused on condensed matter theory and complex systems modeling, with close collaboration with experimental accelerator physics research groups at Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. His work primarily investigated the electromagnetic response of superconducting materials using both analytical and numerical methods. Before joining VMI, Dr. Pathirana served as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Physics at the University of Mary Washington.

Dr. Pathirana’s research centers on complex systems modeling, with a particular emphasis on superconductivity and condensed matter theory. He also pursues interdisciplinary research in renewable energy and low-power circuit design, adapting his expertise to a wide range of collaborative and applied projects. His research lab is equipped with a high-performance workstation dedicated to computational physics research.