Professor Gehan Amaratunga received the B.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Wales, Cardiff, U.K. (summa cum laude) and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Cambridge, Cambridge, U.K., in 1983. 

He has held academic and research positions with Southampton University, Southampton, U.K., the University of Cambridge, Cambridge, U.K., the University of Liverpool, Liverpool, U.K., and Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA. Since 1998, he has been the 1966 Chair Professor of Engineering with the University of Cambridge. From 2011 to 2019, he was also the Chief of Research and Innovation with the Sri Lanka Institute of Nanotechnology (SLINTEC), Sri Lanka, and Tan Chin Tuan Visiting Professor, (2012–2014) and Visiting Professor (2009–2018) with the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is currently an Honorary Visiting Professor with Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School, Shenzen, China, and Yunnan University, Kunming, China.

Professor Amaratunga is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical Engineers and a Chartered Engineer. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2004. Then in 2007 he was awarded the Royal Academy of Engineering Silver Medal for outstanding personal contributions to British Engineering. He is the founder and was Chief Technology Officer and Executive Director of power management integrated circuits company Cambridge Semiconductor Ltd. He has published over 500 academic papers, which have been cited more than 40,000 times, and is the inventor of 34 patents. Professor Gehan is highly regarded in the European, American, and Asian industrial sectors and has engaged in extensive technological and commercial collaborations with companies such as Philips and Ford. He is also the founder of four start-up technology companies.