Interests
My primary area of research is preserving the privacy of individuals through different techniques including distributed machine learning, differential privacy, and federated learning. I am also interested and working in the area of privacy-preserving record linkage (PPRL) especially in developing different privacy attacks on PPRL techniques.
Biography
I am a Research Fellow in the Software Innovation Institute at the Australian National University. My current research project focuses on exploring means of achieving privacy through extremely distributed machine learning. I am working under the supervision of Prof. Graham Williams.
Prior to joining ANU, I received my Bachelor’s degree in Information and Communication Technology (Honours) from the University of Colombo School of Computing, Sri Lanka in 2016.
Apart from research, I am also a passionate photographer studying photography as a hobby. I enjoy travelling and taking photographs of landscapes, cityscapes, woodlands, and wildlife.
Research Areas
My current research work lie in the following specific areas:
- [SOLID] (https://solidproject.org/) and Personal Online Datastores (PODs)
- Data privacy and security
- Distributed machine learning
- Federated learning
- Privacy-preserving record linkage (PPRL)
- Cryptanalysis attacks on PPRL
- Differential privacy
Activities & Awards
Publications
For a full list of research publications, see my Google Scholar Profile.
Awards
- Australia–Germany joint research cooperation scheme fund
German academic exchange service (DAAD), 2021 and 2022. Co-investigator with Peter Christen, Thilina Ranbaduge, Rainer Schnell, and Sarah Redlich. - SIGIR student travel grant
Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM), 2020. - Finalist
he Visualise Your Thesis (VYT) competition, 2020. University level finals, The Australian National University, Canberra. The presentation can be viewed from here - 3MT People’s Choice Award and College Level Winner
Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition, 2019. The Australian National University, Canberra. The presentation can be viewed from here - Professor V. K. Samaranayake Medal for the Most Outstanding Graduate of
UCSC
Univeristy of Colombo School of Computing (UCSC), Sri Lanka, 2015. - Best Final Year Project
4th year undergraduate research project (group) Univeristy of Colombo School of Computing (UCSC), Sri Lanka, 2015.