The Life Scientific: AP De Silva
Discovery
BBC
4.3 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 9 February 2026
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
From humble beginnings in his native Sri Lanka, to a more than 40 year academic career at Queen’s University Belfast, Prof. AP (Amilra Prasanna) De Silva’s research into molecular photosensors has led to a pioneering career in that’s evolved from chemistry to medical diagnostics on one hand, to information processing on the other. Prof. De Silva challenged cultural expectations and overcame the lack of opportunities in chemistry that were available in Sri Lanka in the early 1970s. He first moved to Belfast to pursue research in photochemistry at Queen’s University. Inspired by his grandmother’s struggle with high blood pressure he engineered a unique sodium photosensor by marrying fluorescent molecules with chemical receptors. As a result of his international collaborations, a commercial, portable sensor was developed to detect salts and minerals in the blood. Its speed of analysis has since saved countless lives and improved healthcare around the world. AP talks to Jim Al-Khalili about his passion for engineering molecules and how his photochemical innovations have since crossed into computer science. They’ve been developed to perform molecular computations far inside the human body - where silicon microchips fear to tread. A new deeper understanding of life inside our tissues and cells beckons.
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| 0:41.1 | Hello, as little as 30 years ago, if you'd ended up critically ill in intensive care and needed a detailed analysis of your blood to decide |
| 0:46.8 | the next course of treatment, chances are doctors would have had to wait a day or more for results |
| 0:51.9 | to come back from a lab, time that could have meant the |
| 0:54.3 | difference between life and death. But that weight has been transformed down to less than a minute, |
| 0:59.7 | thanks to the research of my guest today. Professor Amilra Prasana de Silva, or AP DeSilver, |
| 1:05.5 | as he likes to be known, is a pioneer in the fields of photochemistry and molecular computing. |
| 1:12.0 | Born in Sri Lanka, AP studied at both University of Colombo |
| 1:15.1 | and then at Queen's University Belfast, |
| 1:17.6 | where he's still based today as Emeritus Professor of Chemistry. |
| 1:21.5 | In the 1980s, he developed a molecular photosensor. |
| 1:25.0 | Yes, this will be explained, |
| 1:27.0 | that's led to a range of small, portable |
| 1:29.6 | blood analysers that have saved thousands of lives around the world. His achievements have won |
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