Dr. A. P. Hewaarachchi, Senior Lecturer of the Department of Statistics & Computer Science won the Presidential Award for Scientific Research based on the research publication on A. P. Hewaarachchi, Yingbo Li, Robert Lund, Jarred Rennie,  Homogenization of Daily Temperature Data, Journal of Climate 2017, Vol 30, Iss3, pp 985-999. Presidential Awards for Scientific Publication ceremony organized by the National Research Council was held under the patronage of President Maithripala Sirisena at the Taj Samudra Hotel in Colombo 26th of August 2019. The awards are given to each of the top 100 papers published in journals with the highest SCImago Journal Ranking extracted from the Scopus database, by Sri Lankan Scientists with Sri Lankan institutional affiliation.  The President presented awards to over 200 chosen scientists for their publications in medicine, agriculture, Science, and engineering fields for the year 2017.