Dr.  Suranga Chandima Nanayakkara

Suranga Nanayakkara is an Associate Professor at the Department of Computer Science at the National University of Singapore (NUS). Before NUS, Suranga was an Associate Professor at the University of Auckland, appointed by invitation under the Strategic Entrepreneurial Universities scheme.

Suranga started his academic career as an Assistant Professor at the 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.

Since 2011, Suranga has been leading 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 people who face challenges 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 a Senior Member of ACM and has been involved in a number of roles, including General Chair of the Augmented Human Conference in 2015 and serving on many review and program committees including SIGCHI, TEI, and UIST.

For the totality and breadth of his achievements, he has won many awards including Young Inventor Under 35 (TR35 award) in the Asia Pacific region by MIT Tech Review, Outstanding Young Persons of Sri Lanka (TOYP), INK Fellowship 2016, and the Research Excellence Medal by the 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...