Dr. Chandrajith’s research has mostly involved in the field of environmental geochemistry. He have a special interest in the bridging of disciplines, including the chemical, biological and geological sciences, to address multi-faceted environmental problems including Medical Geology. His current projects include estuarine and freshwater geochemistry and isotope applications in low temperature geochemical processes. He has been working on geo-environmental aspects of chronic kidney diseases in Sri Lanka for last 15 years and published several relevant papers in reputed journals. He is also leading several multi-disciplinary research projects and few projects were completed successfully.

Dr. Haider is a clinical nephrologist and educator, currently the Training Program Director Nephrology Fellowship, UConn School of Medicine. Having traveled with the University of Connecticut team to University of Peradeniya and Kandy Teaching hospital, Dr. Haider has a built a strong collaboration and an acute clinical interest in investigating CKDu.

Dr. Rope is a former Stanford Nephrology Teaching fellow, and a current assistant Program Director at Oregon Health Sciences University. His projects include primary care education in CKD, needs assessments in nephrology education, assessing the educational value of consultation, and curriculum development in nephrology.  He led the development and implementation of an online curriculum aimed at supporting CAPD in low-resource settings.

As Senior Scientist and Founding Director of the Institute for Community Research (1987-2004), Dr Schensul established the research agenda and infrastructure for Institute for Community Research. SShe has been the PI or co-investigator for over 27 NIH-supported studies and supplements, and for private foundation studies. She has worked on issues of aging in diverse low income and minority communities since 1980, concentrating on chronic and non-communicable diseases, mental health, and prevention. Among her books are the widely recognized seven volume Ethnographer’s Toolkit (Altamira Press, 1999, 2nd Edition 2010-2015) in Public Health, Nursing, Social Work, Community Psychology, Anthropology, and Sociology. She has worked in South Asia including Mauritius, India and Sri Lanka, and contributes expertise in research methodology and substance use and tobacco use assessment for CKDu research.

Dr. Schensul leads the community-based, participatory research (CBPR) in the Department of Community Medicine and Health Care at the University of Connecticut. His focus is on research methodology (the integration of qualitative and quantitative methods), the development of culturally-based and multilevel interventions, innovative approaches to process and outcome evaluation, the use of both quasi-experimental and randomized controlled designs and the building of interventions through formative research.

His work in Sri Lanka began with a 1982 workshop sponsored by WHO on community participation in health and evolved into a USIA-funded Exchange and Affiliation program (1984-1988) between the University of Connecticut (UCONN) and the University of Peradeniya (UoP) in Sri Lanka in which I was the PI.  He is currently working on the NIH Fogarty Institute funded R21 to develop guidelines for ethnographic observation and in-depth interviewing, analyze qualitative data using computer-based text search programs, use the qualitative results to assist in the formulation of the qualitative survey instrument and assist in analyzing the quantitative survey data and its relationship to CKDu progression.

Dr. Silva undertook his doctoral research was in the field of development sociology.  Since then he has undertaken a number of research projects exploring social and cultural dimensions of public health. The topics covered included social aspects of tropical disease, youth and sexual risk, suicide as a public health problem and the interplay between poverty and disease vulnerabilities. He has been a member of a number of multidisciplinary teams involved in health research. Further he served as the Secretary General of the Asia Pacific Network in Social Sciences and Health (APNET) from 2000 to 2002 and took a leadership position in the Asia-Pacific region in promoting interdisciplinary collaboration in health research and interventions.

Dr. Valhos’ research is focused on the thermodynamic principles that control the transport and partitioning of compounds in the environment. This includes both naturally occurring compounds such as the biogeochemical cycling of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus and the cycling of anthropogenic compounds in natural systems. During her Fulbright Specialist visit in Sri Lanka in June-July 2015 she initiated collaborations with faculty at the University of Peradeniya (UoP) to design a strategy to investigate factors that may contribute to the current, growing epidemic of chronic kidney disease of unknown etiology (CKDu). She has begun with a synergistic working hypothesis to address environmental stressors that have emerged over the last two decades with the epidemic.