A physician and academic, Professor Janaka de Silva is the Senior Professor and Chair of Medicine at University of Kelaniya and a Consultant Physician at Colombo North Teaching Hospital. He was also appointed as eighth Director of the Postgraduate Institute of Medicine (PGIM), University of Colombo by the University Grants Commission. Prior to this appointment, while chairing a number of boards in the PGIM, him and his colleagues founded the first formal training programme for gastroenterologists in Sri Lanka. He also contributed to establishing a liver transplant
service at the Colombo North Teaching Hospital.

He has also served as Chairman of the National Research Council of Sri Lanka from 2013 to 2019. Twenty years after his father P.T de Silva, he became President of the Ceylon College of Physicians in 2004. Professor de Silva also holds the title ‘Vidyajyothi’ which is the highest national honor for science.