CV
Education
- Ph.D in Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Maryland College park, 2023
- M.S. in Electrical Engineering, University of Maryland College park, USA, 2022
- B.Sc. in Biomedical Engineering, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, 2017
Work experience (Please download my CV from home page for updated work experience)
- Fall 2019 - present: Graduate Research Assistant
- Speech Communication Lab at Univeristy of Maryland College Park
- Supervisors: Professor Carol Espy-Wilson and Professor Shihab Shamma
- Contributions:
- Developing an unsupervised learning algorithm inspired by the sensorimotor interactions in humans to learn control parameters to a given articulatory/audio synthesizer (Python/PyTorch, DIVA music synthesizer, libRenderman, pink-trombone)
- Improving an Acoustic-to-Articulatory speech inversion system with data augmentation and multi-task learning frameworks (Python/keras, librosa, audiomentation)
- Working on incorporating nasal and glottal parameters to the existing speech inversion frameworks
- Developed a deep learning based articulatory speech synthesizer from vocal tract variables extracted from a speech inversion system (Python/PyTorch)
- Implemented a multimodal CNN with vocal tract variables and Facial Action Units for assessing articulatory coordination in speech to detect positive symptoms in schizophrenia (Matlab, Python/keras, OpenFace 2.0)
- Developed a mutimodal speech emotion recognition system with articulatory coordination features and text embedding (Python/keras, librosa, GloVe, eGeMAPS)
- Summer 2022: Machine Learning Engineer Intern
- Skylyte, NY, USA
- Contributions:
- Conducted a detailed analysis on vocal biomarkers to identify the best predictors of burnout and resilience (openSMILE, librosa)
- Developed ML models to classify different levels of burnout, resilience, valence and arousal of speech collected from people working in teams at corporate settings
- Designed and started a speech data collection to capture burnout symptoms at work place
- Fall 2018-Spring 2020: Graduate Teaching Assistent
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Univeristy of Maryland College Park
- Worked as a GTA for graduate level class on “Compilers and Optimization” in 2020 spring. Guided students to develop a basic compiler in llvm for cloning functions
- Worked as a GTA for undergrad level “Signals and Systems” class in 2019 spring/2019 fall and “Elements of Discrete Signal Analysis” class in 2018 fall.
- May 2017-July 2018: Research Engineer
- Synergen Technology Labs, Nugegoda, Sri Lanka
- Contributions:
- Developed (and delivered) the communication interface for a wearable ring for capturing PPG and motion signals for a cardiac arrest monitoring system by Rodin Scientific
- Programmed and developed an android mobile app to communicate with a wearable baby monitor device via BLE and to calculate parameters like heart rate, respiratory rate and SpO2 level from the PPG signal.
- Oct 2015-April 2016: Research Intern
- Synergen Technology Labs, Nugegoda, Sri Lanka
- Contributions:
- Worked on establishing the data communication protocol between a custom developed mobile app and an Insole with pressure sensors to detect pressure variation in the foot for diabetic foot ulcer detection.
Research Interests
- Audio deepfake detection
- Articulatory speech production
- Speech and audio enhancement
- Speech and Music Synthesis
- Machine Learning
- Multi-modal systems
- Speech in mental health
Publications (please check my Google scholar account for updated list of publications)
Talks
Invited Talk
Invited Talks at Center for Hearing Research journal club in University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA
Invited Talk
Invited Talks at University of Maryland College Park, MD, College Park, MD
Teaching
Awards and Professional Membership
- Selected as an IEEE ICASSP Rising Star for 2023
- Awarded with Jacob K. Goldhaber Travel Award to attend Interspeech 2022
- Awarded Acoustical Society of America (ASA) travel grant and Jacob K. Goldhaber Travel award to attend 181st meeting of Acoustical Society of America 2021
- Awarded with the “Mahapola Higher Education (Merit) Scholarship” for being in the top 100 in the island in G.C.E Advance Level Examination 2011 from the Mathematics stream.
- Awarded with the “Sisu Udana Scholarship Award” and “Dialog Merit Scholarship” for being island 7th in G.C.E Ordinary Level Examination 2008
- Student member of Acoustical Society of America and IEEE signal processing society