About Me

I'm Nimesha Ranasinghe, an Assistant Professor at the School of Computing and Information System, University of Maine, USA; also directs the Multisensory Interactive Media Lab (MIM Lab) at UMaine. I completed my PhD at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore (NUS). In NUS, I conducted my research work at the Keio-NUS CUTE Center (formerly known as Mixed Reality Lab) of NUS. In 2007, I received my Bachelor of Science Honors degree in Information Technology from University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka.

Prior to joining NUS, I worked on several R&D projects related to Automatic Teller Machines (ATM), Interactive Kiosk Systems, and mobile banking solutions at Interblocks Ltd and Dialog Telekom Ltd in Sri Lanka. I have been working on several research works at NUS such as Petimo, Poetry Mix-Up, Witz Alive AR, and Digital Taste Interface. My current research interests include,

        * Digital Multisensory Interactions (including taste and smell)

        * Ubiquitous & Wearable Computing

        * Human-computer Interaction and new media

        * Digital control systems

        * Embedded systems

        * Augmented reality

Recently, I accepted an honorable mention at the Nokia Ubimedia MindTrek Awards 2012 Competition for my PhD work on Digital Taste Simulation.

Before I conclude my self-introduction, let me tell you a bit about my personality. I'm originally from Sri Lanka (“The Pearl of the Indian Ocean”), I moved to Singapore in 2008 for my Doctoral studies. I am a friendly person, very easy to talk to, love music and nature photography, and I prefer action than words!

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Education

        * 2008 - 2013: PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, National University of Singapore

                        (Thesis title: "Digitally Stimulating the Sensation of Taste Through Electrical and Thermal Stimulation")

        * 2003 - 2007: B.Sc. (Honours) in Information Technology, Faculty of Information Technology, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka

        * 1993 - 2002: Nalanda College, Colombo, Sri Lanka

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Skills

        * Hardware - PIC, Atmel, Arduino, digital circuit design, PCB design, firmware development, 3D printing

        * Software - C/C++, Java, Python, .NET framework (C#, C++), XML, Android development, MySQL, MsSQL

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Experience

        * Mar 2014 - Current: Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Design Technology Lab, New York University Abu Dhabi, UAE

        * Dec 2012 - Feb 2014: Research Engineer at Keio-NUS CUTE Center, National University of Singapore

        * Jan 2008 - Nov 2008: Software Engineer at Interblocks Pvt Ltd., Sri Lanka

        * Aug 2006 - Aug 2007: Part Time Software Engineer at Dialog Telekom Ltd., Sri Lanka

        * Feb 2006 - July 2006: Six months Internship as a Trainee Software Engineer at Dialog Telekom Ltd., Sri Lanka

        * June 2005 - Dec 2005: Web Developer (part-time) in a UK based company, Sellenneuve Private Limited.

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