Nationality Canadian Name Elagu Elaguppillai | Role Scientist Education University of Toronto | |
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Occupation Businessman, Nuclear Scientist | ||
Dr. Elagu V. Elaguppillai, a Canadian of Sri Lankan Tamil descent, is a nuclear scientist, medical researcher, and businessman
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Education
Elaguppillai was born in Sri Lanka and had his high school education in Northern Sri Lanka. He obtained his B.Sc. degree with a First Class Honours from the University of Ceylon, Colombo, and became the recipient of the Gold Medal for the best performance in the science faculty for the year 1964. He was awarded the Canadian Commonwealth scholarship to pursue higher studies in the Department of Physics, University of Toronto, which brought him to Canada in September 1967. He obtained his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in nuclear physics in 1968 and 1970 respectively.
Career
He became a tenured professor in physics at the University of Penang, Malaysia in 1970, and University of Zambia, then returning to the University of Toronto in 1974. He joined Carleton University in 1992, where he developed a graduate course in radiation protection.
Elaguppillai joined the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) as a senior scientific advisor and served there until his retirement in 1997. During this period, he also served as a Canadian expert at the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) from 1992 to 1996. He also served on the expert panel of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on “Nuclear science teaching in high schools and universities”.
In July 1997 he joined the Institute for Research on Environment and Economy (IREE), University of Ottawa as a scientific advisor. The same year, he founded the International Center for Low Dose Radiation Research with millions of dollars of research funding from nuclear agencies in United States, France, Japan and Germany, and became its associate director, directing interdisciplinary research on the effects of low doses of ionizing radiation.
Other activities
In 1998, he started a bio-pharmaceutical start up company, Innopharm Inc., in Markham, Ontario, becoming its founding president and chief operating officer; the company was sold to investors in 2004. He also co-founded the Academy of Applied Pharmaceutical Sciences, a postgraduate pharmaceutical college in Toronto. In 2001 he became the chairman of the editorial board advisory board of a Markham-based Pharmaceutical Canada magazine.
Elaguppillai authored several research papers, scientific reports and analyses, and text books, and served in a number of national and international committees.
city of MarkhamElaguppillai successfully ran as a candidate for regional councillor, in the and secured 16,246 votes.