Dr Suranga Nanayakkara
Fellow & Founder Member
Dr Suranga Nanayakkara is an Associate Professor at Department of Information Systems & Analytics, School of Computing, National University of Singapore (NUS). Before joining NUS, Suranga worked as an Associate Professor at Auckland Bioengineering Institute, University of Auckland. Prior to that, he was with Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) as an Assistant Professor and Postdoctoral Associate at MIT Media Lab.
He received his PhD in 2010 and BEng in 2005 from the National University of Singapore. In 2011, he founded the "Augmented Human Lab" to explore ways of designing intelligent human-computer interfaces that extend the limits of our perceptual and cognitive capabilities.
Suranga is among that rare breed of engineers that has a sense of “humanity” in technology. This ranges from practical behavioral issues, understanding real-life contexts in which technologies function, and understanding where technologies can be not just exciting or novel, but have a meaningful impact on the way people live. The connection he feels to the communities in which he lives and with whom he works is a quality that will ensure his research will always have real relevance.
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 a 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. With publications in prestigious conferences, demonstrations, patents, media coverage and real-world deployments, Suranga has demonstrated the potential of advancing the state-of-the art in Assistive Human-Computer Interfaces. 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), and INK Fellowship 2016.
He received his PhD in 2010 and BEng in 2005 from the National University of Singapore. In 2011, he founded the "Augmented Human Lab" to explore ways of designing intelligent human-computer interfaces that extend the limits of our perceptual and cognitive capabilities.
Suranga is among that rare breed of engineers that has a sense of “humanity” in technology. This ranges from practical behavioral issues, understanding real-life contexts in which technologies function, and understanding where technologies can be not just exciting or novel, but have a meaningful impact on the way people live. The connection he feels to the communities in which he lives and with whom he works is a quality that will ensure his research will always have real relevance.
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 a 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. With publications in prestigious conferences, demonstrations, patents, media coverage and real-world deployments, Suranga has demonstrated the potential of advancing the state-of-the art in Assistive Human-Computer Interfaces. 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), and INK Fellowship 2016.
