Dr. van der Poorten has over 40 years of experience studying butterflies both in Canada and Sri Lanka. In 2008 he discovered a new butterfly, Catopsilia scylla, belonging to the family Pieridae, which is native to Australia, Singapore and Malaysia. He also discovered a skipper new to Sri Lanka, Cephrenes trichopepla, a native of Australia. Both butterflies are now quite widespread across the country. He has studied the life histories of over 180 of our 245 butterfly species and has relocated many species that had not been seen for decades. He has authored several publications on the butterflies of Sri Lanka and a comprehensive book is in the pipeline.

Dr. van der Poorten studied at Trinity College Kandy and the University of Peradeniya. He has a Msc in Crop Physiology and Ph.D in Plant Physiology from the University of Guelph. He left for Canada in 1986, switched fields and completed a degree in Mathematics and Computer Science. He worked for over 20 years in Canada in the field of Information Technology specializing in IBM Databases. However, he kept his lifelong interest in butterflies and visited Sri Lanka as often as he could to pursue his studies on butterflies.