In December 2005 he was on the jury at a Public Hearing on Tsunami Relief and Rehabilitation for Tamil Nadu Coastal Women. During an ownership dispute, in 2010 Kanakaraj was appointed Administrator of Tamil Evangelical Lutheran Church. As of 2012 J. Kanakaraj was a member of the Tamil Nadu branch of Transparency International India. He was chairman of the Chevalier T. Thomas Elizabeth College for Women in North Chennai. He had been appointed to this position on 15 December 2002 by a Division Bench of the Madras High Court. George Owen Rees  George Owen Rees (November 1813 – 27 May 1889) was a Welsh-Italian physician. Born at Smyrna in November 1813, he was son of Josiah Rees, a Levantine merchant and British consul there. His mother was born in Newfoundland, Canada. Thomas Rees was his uncle, and Rev. Josiah Rees his grandfather. He was educated at a private school at Clapham, and acquired a knowledge of French, German, and Italian. In 1829 Rees entered Guy's Hospital, as apprenticed to Richard Stocker the apothecary there. Later, in 1836, he studied at Paris. In the session of 1836–7 he was enrolled at Glasgow University as a student in the classes of botany (under William Dawson Hooker) and surgery (under John Burns). He graduated M.D. at Glasgow on 27 April 1836, and began to practice in London. He first resided in Guilford Street, Russell Square, subsequently in Cork Street, and finally at 26 Albemarle Street, Piccadilly. Through the influence of Sir Benjamin Brodie, Rees secured the appointment as the first medical officer to Pentonville prison. In 1842 he was appointed physician to the Northern Dispensary, and in 1843 assistant physician to Guy's Hospital. He became full physician at Guy's in 1856, and after thirty years' service on the staff there he retired on 26 February 1873, and became consulting physician. He was elected a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1844, and afterwards held in the college the offices of censor (1852–3), senior censor (1863–4), and councillor (1855–64–71). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1843. At Guy's Rees was for many years lecturer on the practice of medicine. He was Gulstonian lecturer at the Royal College of Physicians in 1845, when he lectured "On the Blood: principally in regard to its Physical and Pathological Attributes"; Croonian lecturer in 1856–8, when he chose for his subjects "Calculous Disease and its Consequences" and "Frequent Micturition"; and Harveian orator in 1869.