About

In the Sky, Stars... (translation from sinhalese)

Ahasae Tharu . net is a platform for experimentation as well as to provide examples of developed sites created through OpenSpring.net using the Drupal 7 (& Drupal 6) content management system (CMS). 

Why web development?

It all began with my husband Stéphane, aka scor of RDF and Semantic Web fame in Drupal circles, exposing me to Drupal 4.x and 5.x.  After sitting on the sidelines for some time making fun of the 'evangelical nature of Drupalistas', I found myself in the odd situation of explaining to family and friends in easy language what he was doing. It was a matter of time before I adopted the principle of "If you can't beat 'em, you join 'em". 

My first real Drupal experience began while helping the organizers of the Galway Drupalcamp 2009.  Since then I have jumped in feet first and created and maintained several successful websites (my most notable is for the Sunyata Retreat Centre in Ireland which has e-commerce features).  In 2009, I attended Drupalcon Paris and the Montreal Drupalcamp(Oct).  I also attended Design4Drupal2010.  At present having relocated to the Boston area, I occasionally attend the monthly Boston Drupal Meetups.  In 2011, I aided the organizers of Design4Drupal by being their volunteer co-ordinator.  I hope to do the same and more for next year's meetup.

Most recently I combined my interest in writing with that of Drupal by working as the main reviewer on the Drupal 7 book written by David Mercer and published by PACKT Publishing.  I was also working with authors as an unofficial reviewer for several chapters of the Definitive Guide to Drupal 7 spearheaded by Benjamin Melançon.    My most recent projects include upgrading some websites to Drupal 7 via Drupal Gardens (See Portfolio below) and the website for the Sri Lankan Association of New England (SLANE, Drupal 7.x).  I provide on-going voluntary support to the Sunyata Retreat Centre (D6) as web developer.  

Having worked as both a web developer and a systems administrator as early as 1997, I have had informal training in web design and creation starting from HTML and progressing writing GUI applications in Perl.  I absolutely loved the C++ course I completed while an undergraduate and with that background I found it easy to pick up the necessary CSS and PHP for theming and some module testing/development work.  My interests in Drupal lie in usability (having contributed to some of the patches going into Drupal 7) and front-end set-up and theming.  Recently, I have been promoting my older and simpler sites to Drupal Gardens for easier maintenance.  I'm also a consultant with regards to project management and troubleshoot schema plans with respect to Drupal and other projects.

Feel free to contact me for more information on contracting me for your project.

Portfolio of Drupal based sites: Ahasaetharu.net (D7, DG, D6) | SWSA (DrupalGardens, TBR) | Galway Gospel Choir (DrupalGardens, TBR) |  Sri Lankan Association of New England (D7) | Sunyata Retreat Centre (D6) | Galway Gospel Choir (D6) | Spirit Centre of Galway (D6, no longer maintained/online) | Openspring.net (D6, Previous version) | TBR, To be released. 

Science & Engineering

At present, I'm a Research Technician for Prof. Stephen Harrison's Laboratory of Structural Cell Biology at the Harvard Medical School (HMS) via the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). 

My qualifications in chemical engineering and science include 8 years working in cell culture related projects of which a portion was spent working directly with process engineering and the optimization of media and bioreactors in the vaccine industry. 

I have two research Masters degrees: Thesis titled "Biological Profiling of Progenitors from two Adipose Depots in Healthy and Obese Human Subjects" completed for a Masters of Science in Regenerative Medicine, National University of Ireland - Galway, Ireland (2009) and thesis titled "Hybridoma Cell Culture: Medium Optimization & Application to Fed-batch" towards a Masters of Applied Sciences in Chemical Engineering, University of Waterloo, Canada (2004).  The latter was carried out in collaboration with Aventis Pasteur (now Sanofi Pasteur) in Toronto, Canada.  Prior to these degrees, I completed a Bachelors of Applied Sciences in Chemical Engineering at the University of Waterloo, Canada (2001).

Published Articles:

Statistical methods in media optimization for batch and fed-batch animal cell culture. De Alwis DM, Dutton RL, Scharer J, Moo-Young M., Bioprocess Biosyst Eng. 2007 Mar;30(2):107-13. Epub 2007 Jan 23.