Nadeeshan.

Hello, I’m

Nadeeshan
Dissanayake

Graduate Researcher at the School of Computing and Information Systems, The University of Melbourne. Former Senior Software Engineer at WSO2.

Research interests: machine learning deep learning reinforcement learning data mining optimization signal processing

Portrait of Nadeeshan Dissanayake

About

Open-source contributor. Was a member of the Ballerina programming language team; responsible mainly for the Ballerina runtime, code generation, and optimization.

Graduate from University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka specialized in Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering.

I am passionate about improving my knowledge, conducting research, and using my experience to enhance the value of my work and have a positive impact on real-world applications.

  • Programming languages: Ballerina, Java, Python, MATLAB, C++, C
  • Skills: research and development, problem solving, effective communication, task planning and teamwork
  • Languages: English, Sinhala

Education

The University of Melbourne, Australia

Feb 2024 – present
  • Doctor of Philosophy (Engineering and IT) – School of Computing and Information Systems
    • Research focus: Real-time concurrent optimization of traffic safety and efficiency using deep reinforcement learning
    • Melbourne Research Scholarship recipient

University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka

Oct 2016 – May 2021
  • Honors Degree of Bachelor of Science of Engineering – Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering Specialization
    • First Class Honors with a CGPA 4.06 out of 4.2
    • In Dean’s list on all 8 semesters
    • Ranked 4 out of 101

Esoft Metro Campus, Sri Lanka

2016
  • Diploma in IT with E-Commerce (Pearson Assured)

Maliyadeva College, Kurunegala, Sri Lanka (Primary and High School)

Jan 2002 – Aug 2015
  • General Certificate of Education – Advanced Level Examination (Physical Sciences stream) – 2015
    • Country Rank: 2 out of 32393
    • Z-Score: 3.1675

Publications

N. Dissanayake, R. Borovica-Gajic, E. Tanin, and S. Karunasekera, “RA-VP: Risk-Aware Pedestrian Traffic Violation Prediction at Signalized Intersections,” 2026. To appear in the Proceedings of the 34th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems (SIGSPATIAL ’26).

N. Dissanayake, R. Borovica-Gajic, E. Tanin, and S. Karunasekera, “Safety-Aware Adaptive Traffic Signal Control under Probabilistic Pedestrian Jaywalking,” 2026. To appear in the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC).

N. Dissanayake, R. Borovica-Gajic, E. Tanin, and S. Karunasekera, “Traffic Simulators,” in Encyclopedia of GIS, Springer Nature Switzerland, Cham, Switzerland, 2026, pp. 1–14, doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-23519-6_1685-1. [paper]

N. Dissanayake, C. U. S. Edussooriya, C. Wijenayake, and A. Madanayake, “Multibeam Wideband Transmit Beamforming Using 2D Sparse FIR Trapezoidal Filters,” Journal of Low Power Electronics and Applications, vol. 14, no. 2, Art. no. 2, Jun. 2024, doi: 10.3390/jlpea14020026. [paper]

  • Applied the knowledge of convex optimization, digital filters, and antenna theory. Used MATLAB, CVX toolbox, Python for multi-dimensional signal processing and constrained optimization. Used the CST Studio Suite for the creation and simulation of antenna array system.

D. Pakiyarajah, N. D. K. Dissanayake, C. U. S. Edussooriya, C. Wijenayake and A. Madanayake, “Weighted Least-Squares Design of 2-D IIR Filters with Arbitrary Frequency Response using Iterative Second-Order Cone Programming,” 2022 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS), Austin, TX, USA, 2022, pp. 1-5, doi: 10.1109/ISCAS48785.2022.9937617. [paper] [presentation]

  • Converted the non-convex optimization problem into an iterative second-order cone programming problem, which is then solved using MATLAB and CVX toolbox.

D. Wijesundera, N. Dissanayake, A. Prakash, T. Srikanthan and D. Anhettigama, “Dependency-Aware Clustering for Variable-Grained Hardware-Software Partitioning,” 2019 International Conference on Field-Programmable Technology (ICFPT), Tianjin, China, 2019, pp. 411-414, doi: 10.1109/ICFPT47387.2019.00080. [paper]

  • Presented an algorithm for efficient hardware (HW) – software (SW) partitioning of C applications on FPGAs.

Work Experience

Senior Software Engineer (May 2023 – Feb 2024), Software Engineer (May 2021 – Apr 2023) at WSO2

  • Member of the Ballerina programming language team. Responsible mainly for the Ballerina runtime, including but not limited to scheduling, type checking, runtime APIs, JVM bytecode generation, intermediate representation (IR) optimization, observability, configurability, interoperability and performance. [service letter]

Research Assistant at Hardware and Embedded Systems Lab (HESL), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (2020 QS World University Ranking - 11) (Jun 2019 – Dec 2019)

  • 6 months research internship on the project “Intelligent Tool for Design Exploration and Customization of FPGA based CSoC Platforms”
  • Presented an algorithm for efficient hardware (HW) – software (SW) partitioning of C applications on FPGAs. Estimated the HW, SW performance on functional level for different FPGA device families. Automated the generation of interfaces, C, Verilog code for the HW-SW partitioned application. Used C, Verilog, Python, LLVM, LegUp HLS
  • Supervisors: Dr. Deshya Wijesundera, Dr. Alok Prakash, Prof. Thambipillai Srikanthan

Projects

Human-Motion Recognition using Micro-Doppler Signatures [report]

  • Final thesis project of the BSc degree, designing an end-to-end Doppler radar system.

If the video above does not load, watch it on LinkedIn.

Localization using Low Energy Bluetooth (BLE) Beaconing using an ESP32 and machine learning [report]

  • BLE beacon data were collected using MQTT protocol. This imbalanced dataset was preprocessed and used to train few classifiers such as random forest, gradient boosted decision trees, KNN, and SVM. Ensemble of these classifiers were used to obtain higher accuracy. Ultimately ESP32’s location could be displayed in real-time in Node-RED and in an Android mobile application.

Design of a Mobile App to Detect Types of Medicine using Deep Learning and Android Studio

  • Used Transfer Learning to retrain the MobileNet Convolutional Neural Network and used TensorFlow Lite to deploy it in the mobile phone. Presented to the Brainstorm 2018 competition and got a merit award.

Design and Implementation of an M-Fold Interpolator [report]

Design and Simulation of a Fuzzy Logic Controller [report]

Image Down-sampling Processor Implementation on FPGA [report]

Implementation of a UART using FGPA [report]

AC Voltage Regulator using Power Electronic Devices [report]

Design of a FIR Bandpass Filter using Windowing Method using MATLAB [report]

Bot to Play Game Battleship using PIC Microcontroller [report]

Automatic Irrigation System for Cultivations Based on Moisture Level and Time of the Day

Payroll System Software using Visual Studio

Achievements

  • IEEEXtreme Programming Competition
    • 2020 – World Rank 52, Country Rank 1 – Team TeamNameUOM
    • 2018 – World Rank 91, Country Rank 4 – Team TeamName
    • 2017 – World Rank 127, Country Rank 2 – Team TeamName
  • Google Hash Code
    • 2020 – World Rank 549, Country Rank 3 – Team TeamName
    • 2019 – World Rank 1655, Country Rank 2 – Team TeamName
  • Brainstorm 2018 – Biomedical Competition in Sri Lanka organized by IEEE EMBS University of Moratuwa
    • Merit award
  • aces Coders v 8.0 coding competition – Team TeamName – 2nd place
  • MoraXtreme Programming Competition 2017 – Team TeamName – 1st place
  • International Physics Olympiad 2016 held in Switzerland – Sri Lankan team member
  • 17th Asian Physics Olympiad held in Hong Kong – Sri Lankan team member
  • Sri Lankan Physics Olympiad Competition 2015 – Gold Medal
  • Australian National Chemistry Quiz 2014 – Senior Division - All island 2nd Place
  • Sri Lankan Mathematical Olympiad 2014,2012 – High Distinction
  • International Assessments for Schools – 2008
    • Mathematics - Country rank 1
    • Computer Skills - Country rank 1

Extra-curricular activities

  • ICON 2K17 Conference – AIESEC Colombo South
    • Organizing Committee Vice President - Logistics
  • All Island Inter School Music and Drama Competition 2009
    • Junior section male group singing - All Island 1st Place

Courses

Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering

Electronics - I, Introduction to Telecommunications, Signals and Systems, Electronics Product Design and Manufacture, Laboratory Practice - I, Electronics - II, Random Signals and Processes, Communication Systems and Networks, Laboratory Practice - II, Analog and Digital Communications, Electromagnetics, Electronics - III, Digital Signal Processing, Electronic Design Realization, Circuits and Systems Design, Digital Communications - I, Electronic Control Systems, Industrial Training, Project, Advanced Signal Processing, Research Project, Internet of Things, Robotics, Autonomous Systems

Electrical Engineering

Electrical Engineering, Theory of Electricity

Computer Engineering

Programming Fundamentals, Fundamentals of Computer Organization and Design, Data Structures and Algorithms, Fundamentals of Image Processing and Machine Vision, Computer Networks

General Engineering

Fluid Mechanics, Mechanics, Engineering in Context, Properties of Materials, Engineering Drawing & Computer Aided Modelling

Mathematics

Mathematics, Methods of Mathematics, Calculus, Differential Equations, Linear Algebra, Applied Statistics, Operational Research, Neural Network and Fuzzy Logic

Management

Business Economics and Financial Accounting, Production and Operations Management, Human Resource Management and Industrial Relations, Entrepreneurship Skill Development

Humanities

Language Skill Enhancement - I, Communication Skills, Astronomy and Cosmology, Yoga Practice, Ethics and Legal Fundamentals, Seminar, Technical & Scientific Writing

Online courses

  • Digital Signal Processing - Coursera - Issued Jun 2020 [credential]
  • Building Arduino robots and devices - Coursera - Issued Apr 2020 [credential]
  • Structuring Machine Learning Projects - Coursera - Issued Mar 2020 [credential]
  • Neural Networks and Deep Learning - Coursera - Issued Feb 2020 [credential]
  • Convolutional Neural Networks - Coursera- Issued Mar 2020 [credential]
  • Sequence Models - Coursera - Issued Apr 2020 [credential]
  • Improving Deep Neural Networks: Hyperparameter tuning, Regularization and Optimization - Coursera - Issued Feb 2020 [credential]
  • Deep Learning Specialization - Coursera - Issued Apr 2020 [credential]
  • Introduction to Git and GitHub - Coursera - Issued Nov 2020 [credential]
  • Save, Load and Export Models with Keras - Coursera - Issued May 2020 [credential]
  • Networking Essentials - Cisco Networking Academy Issued Jun 2019
  • Fundamentals of Reinforcement Learning - Coursera - Issued Jan 2021 [credential]
  • Introduction to Java Programming: Java Fundamental Concepts - Coursera - Issued Jan 2021 [credential]
  • Google Cloud Platform Big Data and Machine Learning Fundamentals - Coursera - Issued Jan 2021 [credential]
  • Deep Learning with PyTorch: Build a Neural Network - Coursera - Issued Jan 2021 [credential]
  • Deep Learning with PyTorch : Convolutional Neural Network - Coursera - Issued Jan 2021 [credential]
  • Embedded Software and Hardware Architecture - Coursera - Issued Mar 2021 [credential]
  • Fundamentals of Digital Image and Video Processing - Coursera - Issued Mar 2021 [credential]
  • Understanding Financial Markets - Coursera - Issued Mar 2021 [credential]