The PI
Thanuka Wickramarathne, Ph.D.
I've always been fascinated by creative processing of signals, whether its music, images or Radar. For complex processing tasks involving signals generated by disparate multi-modal sensors, including soft (i.e., human-based) and hard (i.e., physics-based) sensors, multi-sensor data fusion provides a perspective on how one may systematically organize, simplify and tackle the required processing. While such tasks have always been around in the defense community, recent highly data-driven trends are slowly bringing these notions into the mainstream. With a particular interest in enhanced situational awareness with ubiquitous sensing, I work in the general area of multi-sensor data fusion involving both soft and hard sensors.
Biography
Dr. Wickramarathne is currently a tenure-track Assistant Professor with the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at University of Massachusetts Lowell. Previously, he was Research Assistant Professor in the Departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Notre Dame, Engineering Intern with the DSP group at Motorola Solutions (Plantation, FL) and RNP Engineer (short stint) at Celltel Lanka (now Etiselat, in Sri Lanka). He received his B.Sc. in Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering from University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka and both of his MS and PhD degrees in Electrical & Computer Engineering from University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL. He is a Senior Member of IEEE and currently serves on the Board of Governers of IEEE Vehicular Technology Society (VTS) and Administrative Committee of IEEE Sensors Council.
Dr. Wickramarathne grew up with his parents and two younger siblings in the beautiful island of Sri Lanka. He enjoys competitive sports and weekend projects, played competitive Table Tennis (20+yrs ago), was a practitioner of Kyokushin-Kai Kan for 10+yrs (and planning to get back into it after tenure ☺). He's now an avid Tennis player, occasional skier, amateur drummer, and a cyclist.