Data Drives '20 - Seminar

A Seminar on "Data Science Applications in Data-Driven Decision Making"

Focusing on Logistics, Marketing, Fintech, and Covid-19

Data Drives 2020 is an event organized by DataSEARCH for the advancement of data science. Data Drives 2020 intends to promote data-driven decision making in Sri Lanka by engaging students, academia, and the industry via a Zoom seminar.

High profile Data Scientists, Researchers and Engineers working on related fields will be presenting at Data Drives 2020.

Guest speaker list;

• Dr. Su Nguyen, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Data Analytics and Cognition, La Trobe University. 

Dr. Su Nguyen is a Senior Research Fellow and Algorithm Lead at the Centre for Data Analytics and Cognition (CDAC), La Trobe University, Australia. He received his Ph.D. degree in Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics from Victoria University of Wellington (VUW), Wellington, New Zealand, in 2013. His expertise includes computational intelligence, optimization, data analytics, large-scale simulation, and their applications in energy, operations management, and social networks. Read more.

• Dr. Alex Richard Cook, Vice Dean (Research) and Domain Leader (Biostatistics and Modelling), Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore.

Dr. Alex Cook is an Associate Professor at the NUS Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health where he is also the Vice Dean (Research). He works on infectious disease modelling and statistics, including dengue, influenza and other respiratory pathogens, and on population modelling to assess the effect of evolving demographics on non-communicable diseases such as diabetes. His multidisciplinary team brings together researchers from the fields of statistics, computational biology, computer engineering, mathematics, geography and environmental sciences. Read more.

• Prof. Tuan Quang Phan, Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Hong Kong.

Dr. Tuan Q. Phan’s research uses large and population-size datasets and spans multiple disciplines including economics, marketing, consumer behavior, computer science, and statistics.  His expertise covers various industries including FinTech, retail and e-commerce, logistics and transportation, social media, news and video media, technology and consumer products, and education.  His research has been published in leading scientific and management journals including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), Marketing Science, Journal of Marketing Research (JMR), and Information Systems Research (ISR). Read more.

• Dr. Rukshan Batuwita, PhD (University of Oxford).

Dr. Rukshan Batuwita has been working in Data Science/applied Machine Learning for the last 14 years. Previously he worked as the Lead Data Scientist at Woolworths Group and Senior Data Scientist at Ambiata Ltd in Australia, where he was a founding employee. During his time in academia, he held research positions in ML at National ICT Australia, MIT and Imperial College London. He completed his PhD in Machine Learning at the University of Oxford, UK, and BSc in Computer Science and Statistics at the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. Read more.

DataSEARCH Team;

• Dr. A. S. Perera, Director, DataSEARCH and Senior Lecturer, University of Moratuwa.

Dr. Amal Shehan Perera is a senior lecturer in computer science at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. He has multiple research publications and a co-owner of a US patent. His areas of interest include data mining, database systems, and software engineering. He won the ACM KDD Cup 2006 for data mining in collaboration with Prof. William Perrizo. He was invited to work on the research and development team on vertical data mining tools as a senior visiting research scholar at North Dakota State University in 2009. Read more.

• Mr. Sudeepa Nadeeshan, Graduate Research Assistant, DataSEARCH

Mr. Sudeepa Nadeeshan is a Graduate Research Assistant at the University of Moratuwa. He is supervised by Dr Amal Shehan Perera. He is a member of the Data Science, Engineering & Analytics Research Centre/Hub (DataSEARCH) group of UOM. He has completed B.Sc in Engineering Specialized in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Moratuwa, SL in 2018. He is currently working on mathematical modeling and optimization related to urban transportation. He has also worked on Natural Language Processing and understanding (voice) for closed domains. His research is focused on developing efficient, sustainable public bus transportation systems for Sri Lankan context. More.

• Mr. Gayan Kavirathne, Graduate Research Assistant, DataSEARCH

Mr. Gayan Kavirathne is a Graduate Research Assistant at Data Science, Engineering & Analytics Research group of University of Moratuwa (UoM).  He has completed his Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Moratuwa.  His current research work is focused on extracting mobility patterns from mobile network big data to use in, predicting infectious disease propagation, under the guidance of Dr. Amal Shehan Perera and Mr. Lasantha Fernando.. More.

• Mr. Gathika Ratnayaka, Graduate Research Assistant, DataSEARCH

Mr. Gathika Ratnayaka is a Graduate Research Assistant (Part Time) at Data Science, Engineering & Analytics Research group of University of Moratuwa (UoM).  He has completed his Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Moratuwa, with a First Class Distinction.  His current research work is focused on extracting information from legal documents using Natural Language Processing techniques under the guidance of Dr. Amal Shehan Perera and Mr. Nisansa de Silva. He is also working as a Research and Development Engineer at Xeptagon. Before joining DataSEARCH, Gathika was a member of IoT Startup Entgra, where he led several research projects related to Image Processing and Edge Computing.. More.

• Mr. Kumaran Kugathasan, Graduate Research Assistant, DataSEARCH

Mr. Kumaran Kugathasan is an undergraduate batch topper with a BSc (Hons) in Software Engineering from the University of the West of England. He is currently reading for his MSc in Computer Science by Research at University of Moratuwa.. More.