Dr Michael Ponnambalam, a senior lecturer in Physics at the Mona Campus, has an extraordinary love for teaching and this is demonstrated in the quality of his work as a lecturer and in the response of his students. His passion for imparting knowledge and his creativity in advancing student learning have reaped rewards for himself as well as his students. His student evaluations average in the range of 4.5 on a five-point scale.

To promote and reward excellence, he has been awarding the Michael Tharmanahthan Bursary (formerly Dr. M.J. Ponnambalam Bursary) to the top student in General Physics, using his own funds, since 1991.

Dr. Ponnambalam has been presenting papers regularly at the American Association of Physics Teachers Meetings and the Inter-American Conferences on Physics Education (IACPE). As a result, he is now an executive member of the IACPE Council.

Dr. Ponnambalam was the senior staff member of the Special Task Force Team which was set up in the Department, and he has played a key role in launching several new initiatives such as:

• He played a major role in the establishment of the Physics Virtual Laboratory which was launched in November 2006 for Preliminary Physics Students; and supervised the expansion in 2007 to include the students doing P33E - Modern Physics II. He was also instrumental in the expansion of the laboratory to include all Physics students.

• He is Coordinator of the Department’s Outreach Programme. He is responsible for organizing and leading:

• "The New Physics Outreach to High Schools and Primary Schools" in October 2006, which is still underway and doing very well. He often visits schools, bringing along with him a set of post-graduate students, and demonstrates exciting and interactive Physics experiments to students.

• The "CAPE Workshop for Unit 2 Physics Students" in January 2007. The Second CAPE Workshop which comprised of both Unit 1 and Unit 2 was conducted in January 2008 and attracted 737 students from 24 High Schools.