Prof. Athula Sumathipala elected Secy. General of IATR

Professor Athula Sumathipala, founder of the Sri Lanka Twin Registry, has been elected to the post of Secretary General of the International Association for Twin Research (IATR) for the years 2024 and 2025. Over 60 active twin research organizations and registries around the world are members of the association.

He was elected to the post at the 18th International Twin Research Congress held in Budapest Hungary from June 15 to 17th June.

The International Society for Twin Studies (ISTS) is an international, non-profit scientific organization. The aim of the society is to advance research and knowledge in all fields of science related to twins and/or twin studies, for the benefit of twins, their families as well as worldwide scientific communities. It was founded in Rome Italy.

Sri Lankan Twin

Registry was founded by Prof Sumathipala and colleagues in 1997 in collaboration with Prof Matthew Hotopf, Kings College London.

It has established an island wide volunteer twin register of 7,300 twin pairs, Colombo District based population register of over 10,000 pairs (1,500 twin pairs above 65 years) and a separate adolescent register of 688 twin pairs established in 2018.

Under Prof. Sumathipala’s leadership, the Sri Lankan Twin Registry has contributed a wealth of new knowledge to the field of scientific research.

It is the oldest and largest twin register in Asia. Even though there are population based twin registers in Scandinavian countries, such registries are not common in low and middle income countries.