After studies at
Royal College, Colombo (1972-1982) and the
University of Moratuwa (1984) in
Sri Lanka, Amarasinghe received his B.S. degree in electrical engineering and computer science from
Cornell University in
New York (1988). Spending summers working at
Microsoft, he then earned a master's degree in electrical engineering from
Stanford University (1990). After working as a consultant and software engineer, he was the co-founder and director of Lanka Internet Services, Ltd. (1994-2001), the first
ISP in Sri Lanka. He completed a PhD in electrical engineering at
Stanford University (1997) and then joined the department of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT as an assistant professor (1997). He was eventually tenured, and was promoted to full professor in 2009. He is conducting research there as part of the
Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and leading the lab's Commit compiler research group. ==Honors and awards==