Yasantha Rajakarunanayake

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Yasantha Rajakarunanayake
NationalitySri Lanka
USA
Education St Peter's College, Colombo, Royal College, Colombo, Sri Lanka
Alma mater Princeton University
California Institute of Technology
Occupation(s)mathematician, technologist, professor, researcher and data scientist
Children2 [ citation needed ]
Scientific career
Fields Electronic Engineering
Institutions MediaTek

Yasantha Rajakarunanayake is a Sri Lanka-born American mathematician, technologist, researcher, professor and data scientist. He is best known for befriending future Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, a classmate at Princeton University. He received social media fame and attention for having assisted Bezos on a homework assignment by solving a mathematical problem. [1] [2] [3]

Contents

Biography

Yasantha grew up in the Colombo suburb of Ratmalana. His mother, Ethel Rajakarunanayake, served as a school teacher at St. Mary's College in Dehiwala. His father, Hilary Rajakarunanayake, served as an accountant in the Middle East region. His father also spent a short stint working at Daily News as its Deputy Editor before his retirement. [4] He attended the Royal College in Colombo and excelled in his academic studies. Notably, he was a batch top at his school and he managed to receive the highest marks in the GCE Advanced Level Examination in the Combined Mathematics stream by obtaining satisfactory results of 4A's. Yasantha suffered from asthma since childhood. His father advised him to find a well maintained air conditioned office so that he does not have to breathe dusty air while working. He took his father's advice seriously and focused on making a career in IT. [4]

Career

Yasantha initially pursued his higher education at the University of Moratuwa in the field of electronic engineering. He eventually received a scholarship offer to attend Princeton University and left Sri Lanka in 1982 to pursue his remaining undergraduate education at Princeton. At this time, he coincidentally met Bezos, who later went on to found Amazon.com. [1] Bezos called him the "smartest guy at Princeton". [4] On 13 September 2018, during a talk at The Economic Club of Washington, D.C., Bezos heaped praise on Yasantha. [5]

Bezos, during the talk, related that Yasantha had easily solved a mathematical problem that Bezos and his roommate could not solve. This led Bezos to give up on becoming a theoretical physicist. [4] [6] [7] [8] Bezos and Yasantha, though, did not maintain a close connection after they left Princeton. [9] Soon after Bezos had mentioned Yasantha's name in the September talk, people apparently went to search about him in the internet and several of them even sent emails and text messages to reach out to Yasantha, who revealed that most of the mail messages from anonymous persons repeatedly asked whether "Are you Jeff Bezos' Yoshanta’?" He confirmed that he received spam emails in his LinkedIn inbox, as he initially had cast doubts and suspicions about whether someone had hacked his email. [1]

After he completed his undergraduate studies as an Electrical Engineering and Computer Science major in 1985, he obtained his Doctor of Philosophy in the field of Applied Physics at California Institute of Technology. [1] He worked for few years as a university professor in Physics and established his reputation with over 50 technical publications before switching his career trajectory into internet technology in 1995 after becoming aware of the potential of Broadband internet. [4] He worked as a senior technologist and scientist with experience spanning three decades. As of August 2019, he reportedly had 94 US patent applications for his inventions which also included pending applications prior to approval. He created several innovative applications and artificial intelligence algorithm designs for human presence and gesture detection with mmWave radar systems. [10] He developed and designed systems algorithms that could leverage AI in novel MedTech and medical imaging applications. He successfully implemented and improved techniques and methodologies that could improvise and enhance medical diagnosis. [11]

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Mihindukulasuriya, Regina (20 September 2018). "The Sri Lankan who solved a maths problem for Jeff Bezos & gave the world Amazon". ThePrint. Retrieved 17 June 2024.
  2. ↑ "How a maths problem changed the world's richest man's life forever". The Times of India. 10 February 2020. ISSN   0971-8257 . Retrieved 17 June 2024.
  3. ↑ Tidefall Capital (16 September 2018). Cosine: The exact moment Jeff Bezos decided not to become a physicist . Retrieved 17 June 2024– via YouTube.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 "Dr. Yasantha Rajakarunanayake: "the smartest guy at Princeton" - Life Online". life.lk. Retrieved 17 June 2024.
  5. ↑ CNBC (13 September 2018). Jeff Bezos At The Economic Club Of Washington (9/13/18) . Retrieved 17 June 2024– via YouTube.
  6. ↑ "The seeds of my success were sown in early childhood. | UNICEF Sri Lanka". www.unicef.org. Retrieved 17 June 2024.
  7. ↑ Wolfe, Sean. "Watch Jeff Bezos tell the funny story about the moment in college he realized he 'was never going to be a great theoretical physicist'". Business Insider. Retrieved 17 June 2024.
  8. ↑ "Jeff Bezos wanted to be a physicist, but started Amazon after a friend showed him he wasn't smart enough". India Today. 24 September 2018. Retrieved 17 June 2024.
  9. ↑ "Lankan who solved maths problem for Jeff Bezos and gave world Amazon | Daily FT". ft.lk. Retrieved 17 June 2024.
  10. ↑ "SLF Int USA, Lifetime Achievement Award Winner Dr Yasantha Rajakarunanayaka For his Excellence as a Technologist, Scientist and Innovator | Sri Lanka Foundation". www.srilankafoundation.org. Retrieved 17 June 2024.
  11. ↑ "Dr. Yasantha Rajakarunanayake, Ph.D. | Sri Lanka Foundation". srilankafoundation.org. Retrieved 17 June 2024.
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