Prof. Damminda Alahakoon
PhD (Monash), BSc Hons (Colombo)
Damminda’s research laid the foundation for a technology start up called ‘Conscious Machines’ which is now operating from Melbourne. He works closely with the Australian Artificial Intelligence community and is a member of the Australian Artificial Intelligence Steering Committee. His work on Self Organizing Maps and Exploratory Data Mining have resulted in several innovative algorithms and tools. The Growing Self Organizing Map (GSOM) he developed has been adopted internationally and used by researchers as well as extended into commercial tools. Damminda has over 8 years’ experience in the IT and finance industries, in Sri Lanka, Australia and the Netherlands in addition to his 10 years as an academic and continues to work with industry as a consultant in data analytics, machine learning and cognitive computing.