Dr. Gaya Ranawaka assumed duties as the Dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences at The Open University of Sri Lanka in January 2010. She first joined the university in September 1993 as a Senior Lecturer in Zoology and became Head of the Department of Zoology in 2005. Dr. Ranawaka is the seventh Dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences.

She had her entire school education at Visakha Vidyalaya, Colombo and then entered the University of Colombo to read for a Bachelors Degree in Science. After graduating with a First Class in 1987, she proceeded to the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, London for postgraduate research studies in malaria, on a scholarship awarded by the President’s Fund and Mahapola Higher Education Scholarship Trust Fund, Sri Lanka. She was also the recipient of the Beit Fellowship for Scientific Research in 1991, awarded by the Beit Foundation, UK. In 1993 she earned a PhD in Parasitology from the University of London, UK.

Dr. Ranawaka has worked as a visiting postdoctoral scientist at the National Institute for Medical Research, London (2002-2003) on a Fellowship awarded by the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission, U.K. and also at the University of Swansea, Wales (2009) on an Association of Commonwealth Universities Titular Fellowship.