Nalin Wikramanayake is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Civil Engineering at the Open University of Sri Lanka. His main areas of teaching and research and coastal hydrodynamics and sediment transport, coastal zone management, extreme events, water pollution and sustainable sanitation. Nalin has also been involved in several inter-disciplinary intiatives including the Land-Ocean Interactions in the Coastal Zone (LOICZ) project (www.loicz.org) and the establishment of the Master of Development Practice at the University of Peradeniya (http://www.pdn.ac.lk/arts/econ/mdp/index.htm).