Dr.  Suranga Chandima Nanayakkara

Suranga Nanayakkara is an Associate Professor at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute the University of Auckland (UoA), appointed by invitation under strategic entrepreneurial universities scheme. Before joining UoA, Suranga was an Assistant Professor at Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) and a Postdoctoral Associate at the Fluid Interfaces group, MIT Media Lab. Suranga received his PhD in 2010 and BEng in 2005 from the  National University of Singapore. In 2011, Suranga founded the  “Augmented Human Lab” to explore ways of designing intelligent human-computer interfaces that extend the limits of our perceptual and cognitive capabilities. 

His work is most important to the people whose lives it most directly impacts: those who face challenged to function in the world due to sensory deficits in hearing or vision. What also makes Suranga’s contributions important is that they are not only applicable to those specific communities. Because of his emphasis on “enabling” rather than “fixing,” the technologies that Suranga has developed have a potentially much broader range of applications. 

Suranga is Senior Member of ACM and has been involved in a number of roles, including General Chair of Augmented Human Conference in 2015 and on many review and program committees including SIG CHI, TEI and UIST.

For the totality and breadth of achievements, he has won many awards including young inventor under 35 (TR35 award) in the Asia Pacific region by MIT TechReview, Outstanding Young Persons of Sri Lanka (TOYP), INK Fellowship 2016 and Research Excellence Medal by University of Auckland in 2020.

• Design Innovations: Thinking Outside the ?Computer? Box
  Technology has reached a critical point compared to the generations before. Machines now possess new skills (Speaking, Hearing, Seeing, Understanding and answering) creating direct threats to the...
• New Frontiers of Assistive Augmentations
  The overarching topic of this lecture is centred on the design and development of novel human computer interfaces that seamlessly integrate with a user’s mind, body and behaviour, providing...
• Project Kiwrious: Activating Curious and Fearless Problem Solvers
  Project Kiwrious (a wordplay on Curious) aims to democratize and empower science education for young New Zealand students, primarily in low socio-economic schools. Kiwrios low cost plug and play...