Home – Cyril's Blog

During the day, a Computer Science PhD student at Rochester Institute of Technology and spends most of the time starring at a screen working on a project committing to git, if not behind a camera viewfinder taking photos.

During the night, fighting crime as knight of darkness using Python.

As of typing, looking for an internship for Summer 2020.

“AI is the new electricity” – Andrew Ng

Experience

2018 – Present

Graduate Research Assistant at RIT

Designed and conducted experiments on advanced machine learning models and algorithms to analyze unstructured social data from Twitter and Reddit created in both simulated, and real-world environments. The pipeline was designed using Python and TensorFlow. The research is primarily focused on building label distribution learning model to capture the entire perspective of the labeler.

2019 Summer

Intern at HEALS Team at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute collaboration with IBM AI Horizon

Worked as part of their team as a NLP engineer to improving the data extraction, aggregation and combination of food data.

2018 – Present

Software Engineer for the cb-EMR Project for Sri Lanka

cb-EMR is a cloud based electronic medical record system which is being built for Sri Lanka. This project is a collaborative project between various departments at University of Kelaniya. The pilot project is currently in session at the clinic of the Department of Family Medicine, University of Kelaniya. Responsible for setting up and maintaining the cb-EMR on digitalocean and its development (PHP based). The project is pending NSF funding approval.

2016

Internship at Lesova Holdings, Sri Lanka

Interned as Web Developer and Designer to introduce T-Shirt Maldives website and setup the Customer Relations Management System which was based on Zendesk and Freshdesk. During the internship, co-founded Refresh Media Private Limited

2012-2013

Co-Designer and Developer for the Trinity College Kandy Website

The website was primarily implemented on WordPress CMS. Located at www.trinitycollege.lk

2011-Present

Co-Founder and Developer of Trinity College Kandy Worldwide Website

The co-founder and developer of Trinitylk.com and a content writer for the website. The website was designed and developed on wordpress CMS platform.

Connect

Skills

Education

2018 – Present

Computer Science PhD Candidate

Rochester Institute of Technology, NY.

I am very fortunate to be advised by Dr. Christopher M. Homan. Working on Label Distribution Learning on Social Media research.

2013 – 2017

Bachelors Degree in Computer Science

University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka.

Thesis: KeyXtract – Twitter Model: Keyword Extraction Method using NLP Tools. Advised by Dr. Sidath Liyanage.

Research Interest

Machine Learning, Label Distribution Learning, Active Learning, Social Data Analytics, Natural Language Processing, Chemistry(la Computational Chemistry), Software Engineering and Sociolinguistics

Teaching Experience

2017 – 2018

Teaching Assistant at University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka

Assisted in Teaching Fundamentals of Computing, Programming in C, Object Oriented Programming and Data Structures and Algorithms. Served as the TA for the hackathon HacKLN 2017. Setup the Moodle installation and maintained for the Department of Statistics and Computer Science.

Event Organizing experience

Organizing Committee Member at Gavel Club, University of Kelaniya

2015 – 2018

A member of Best Speaker, the inter university Best Speaker Competition organized by the club. Served as a video creator, web designer (and developer) for the websites, content (graphic) creator for the social media and magazine.

Organizing Committee Member at Career Fair, University of Kelaniya

2016 – 2017

A member of the Career Fair organizing Committee, this consisted of implementing the system to handle the registration of attendees for the event, which is roughly 600+ per year. After the registrations, the attendees were sorted into the companies based on their initial preferences.

Recent publications

Weerasooriya, T., Perera, N., & Liyanage, S. R. (2017). A Framework for Automated Corpus Compilation for KeyXtract : Twitter Model. 2017 International Conference on Advances in ICT for Emerging Regions (ICTer), 43–48. [link]

Weerasooriya, T., Perera, N. and Liyanage, S. R. (2017). KeyXtract Twitter Model – An Essential Keywords Extraction Model for Twitter Designed using NLP Tools. In 10th KDU International Research Conference. Ratmalana. [pdf]

Perera, N., & Weerasooriya, T. (2016). The Racecourse of Then and Now: Evolution of the Sri Lankan English Vocabulary Over Two Generations of SLE Speakers. VISTAS Journal, 10, 1–23. [pdf]

Weerasooriya, T. (2016). Automated Railway Ticketing System: Replacing the paper based ticket with the Electronic National Identity. ICT for Development Working Paper Series, 6(1–2), 67–77. [pdf]

Weerasooriya, T. (2016). Intelligent Sorting System for Curriculum Vitaes using Natural Language Processing. 17^th International Postgraduate Research Conference, Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Kelaniya, 8-9^th December 2016 [pdf] [link]

Perera, N. and Weerasooriya, T. (2016). SLE Over the Years: Evolution of The SLE Vocabulary over Two Generations of SLE Speakers. 2^nd International Conference on the Humanities, University of Kelaniya, 7^th October 2016 [pdf] [link]

Weerasooriya, T., Perera, N. and Liyanage, S. R. (2016). A Method to Extract Essential Keywords from a Tweet Using NLP Tools. 2016 International Conference in Advances in ICT for Emerging Regions (ICTer). pp. 029-034. [pdf] [link]

Weerasooriya, T. and Perera, N. (2016). A Method to Sort Official Correspondence through Natural Language Processing. Second International Conference on Linguistics in Sri Lanka, University of Kelaniya, 25^th August 2016 [pdf] [link]

Weerasooriya, T. (2016). Paperless automated railway ticketing system for Sri Lanka using the electronic national identity card. In: Proceedings of the International Symposium on Information and Communication Technology for Sustainable Development,10-12 August 2016, V.P.A. Weerasinghe and W.M.D.N. Wijeyaratne (Eds.), p 6, Department of Zoology and Environmental Management, University of Kelaniya, Kelaniya, Sri Lanka 57pp. [pdf] [link]

Weerasooriya, T. (2016). Automated Railway Ticketing System making use of the Electronic National Identity Card. 34^th National Information Technology Conference. pp. 76-82 [pdf]

Creative Portfolio

Content Writing

Refresh.LK Experience

Trinity College Kandy Worldwide Website – www.trinitylk.com