Senani Ponnamperuma Author - IT Specialist
Senani Ponnamperuma is an author, content creator, and IT specialist. His books The Story of Sigiriya and The Story of Anuradhapura, have been well-received by critics and are available at many prestigious libraries, including the British Library, the Library of Congress, Harvard, Stanford, Cornell, UC Berkeley, New York, and Columbia. Ponnamperuma's books are considered an important piece of Sri Lanka’s literary heritage and have received favorable critical reviews in newspapers and magazines and numerous five-star rating on Amazon and Goodreads.
In 1997, Senani created Trishan's Oz, the first comprehensive website about Australia, which won several awards, including the Australian Financial Review/Telstra Internet Site Award for Best Children’s Website in 1997 and 1998. The website has received tens of millions of hits and is still one of the most visited websites about Australia. The National Library of Australia PANDORA project selected the site for the preservation and long-term access of Australian online electronic publications of national significance.
Senani Ponnamperuma is the son Dr Felix (FN) Ponnamperuma and the nephew of Prof Cyril Ponnamperuma. He was born in Sri Lanka and educated in Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and the USA, obtaining a degree in Information Technology and Business Administration at the University of Oregon. He began his career at the Ford Motor Company and later worked with ADAPS. In 1978, he was appointed IT Manager of Wangaratta Woollen Mills. At the age of thirty, he was appointed Chief Information Officer at Payless Supermarkets, becoming the first Sri Lankan and the youngest person to hold the position of CIO in a large Australian company. One of his many professional achievements there was to successfully implement bar code scanning technology in Australian supermarkets. After leaving Payless, Senani pursued a career as a consultant. He was engaged by Coles Myer (Coles Group) to implement state-of-the-art in-store systems for their new stationary superstores, Officeworks. Later, he served as the CIO of Spotlight Stores, leading a significant transformation of the company's IT systems. Senani now follows his passion for writing and has published four books.
