Peradeniya University:

Budding computer engineers

Tharindu Weerasinghe

The oldest, the largest and the most picturesque university of the country, University of Peradeniya, produces graduates with professionalism and humbleness. Add to that, Peradeniya motivates its undergraduates (well known as Pera people) to be skillful and mindful in their respective fields of study.

This newest example pivots around the youngest and the rapidly growing department of the Faculty of Engineering – the Department of Computer Engineering, which recently brought pride to the Pera community.

The department’s enthusiastic undergraduates have been successful in adding novelty to Sri Lankan software industry. At the Fifth International Conference on Information and Automation for Sustainability (ICIAfS’10), Department of Computer Engineering snatched the Best Paper Award.

The conference was jointly organized by University of Moratuwa, Centre for Robotics Research, Kings College, London and University of Melbourne, Australia and was held between December 17 and 19, 2010 at Hotel Galadari, Colombo.

The paper titled ‘Converting Printed Sinhala Documents to Formatted Editable Text’ co-authored by Shahina Ajward, Nalani Jayasundara, Sarasi Madushika and Roshan Ragel of Department of Computer Engineering topped the Information and Communication Technology and Social Transformation track.

Of the five awards that were to be presented, only this paper and another were presented with awards from more than 100 papers from 16 countries.

Another team of Computer Engineering undergraduates won the second place coming next to University of Ruhuna at The Inter University Enterprise Mobility Software Development Competition, organized jointly by the Sri Lanka Association of Software and Services Centre of Excellence for Mobile and Telecom (SLASSCOM) and Motorola Technologies Lanka (Pvt), which was held last year at the Colombo University School of Computing.

Another team representing the Department of Computer Engineering, University of Peradeniya made it to the top 12 finalists of about 50 initial submissions. While being technically and practically very outstanding, both of the projects by University of Peradeniya were very well presented.

The competition was participated by all the leading state Universities and some private higher-educational institutions of Sri Lanka and the panel of judges included both local and foreign high-profile professionals.

The team won the award for its product titled ‘Mobile Solution for a Civil Engineer’, which aids in all the usual activities of a Civil Engineering from surveying, material testing and construction to building maintenance.

The solution is deployed on a portable Motorola device making it ideal for a Civil Engineer working in a remote site. The group of third year students who won the award includes E A P S Rahal, R B M R Rajapaksha, O J S Rupananda, H M P L Herath, H H T S Herath, P M U C B Senanayake, S A L D Senadheera, and W W S M Mendis under the supervision of Dr D Elkaduwe.

The departments’ many core and interdisciplinary research groups conduct research on topics such as Computer Architecture, Embedded Systems, Intelligent Systems and regularly publish at various local and international conferences.

With its energetic undergraduates and the dedicated academic staff, it is inevitable that the department of Computer Engineering at University of Peradeniya would make its mark in Sri Lankan IT field and transform the young generation in to a group of highly capable IT professionals and researchers.

“Computer Engineering is a field of study where we feel the limit is far beyond the horizon” said Computer Engineering Department Head Dr Manjula Sandirigama, an alumna herself. She explained that it is not only Software Engineering; but also Embedded Systems, Electronics, Networks and distributed systems, Robotics, Digital Controls, Data mining and Artificial Intelligence.

“Consequently the department of Computer Engineering is trying to produce graduates who are capable and competent in many walks of life in the world of computer engineering” said Dr Sandirigama.