Dr Shanthi Ameratunga is a Senior Lecturer in Epidemiology based at the School of Population Health at the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, University of Auckland, New Zealand. Following her early education in Sri Lanka, Shanthi qualified as a paediatrician in New Zealand. Her clinical work in urban and rural settings and interest in young people stimulated a career in injury prevention. Funded by a fellowship from the Accident Compensation Corporation of New Zealand, she trained in Auckland and subsequently, Baltimore, graduating with distinction from the Masters in Public Health program at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the same institution, Shanthi returned to New Zealand where her work has focused on road traffic trauma and injury related disability using epidemiological and qualitative research methods.

Shanthi is particularly interested in supporting research and training activities that enhance the capacity of low and middle income countries to address local injury issues. She is a partner of the Road Traffic Injury Network of the Global Forum for Health Research and the public health representative on the New Zealand Trauma Committee of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. She has been an invited contributor to injury research and policy programs in New Zealand and overseas, an external reviewer of national disability surveys, and a member of research review panels and the Injury and Rehabilitation Portfolio Advisory Group of the Health Research Council of New Zealand. She is currently leading a major collaboration between the Fiji School of Medicine and the University of Auckland investigating traffic related injury in the Pacific, funded by the Wellcome Trust (UK) and the Health Research Council (NZ).