Meet Sri Lankan Researcher — Mukunthan Tharmakulasingam

What are you currently working on or worked on before?

Ph.D. on Machine learning algorithms for predicting antimicrobial resistance using genome sequences and farm data.
Other than my Ph.D. project, I’m also working on applying Machine learning methods to reduce LAMP-based testing time to detect COVID-19 and infectious disease in poultry farms.

What encouraged you to pursue your research topic?

Interest in applying artificial intelligence for the Medical and agriculture field to create values for human life.

What is the name of your current institute?

Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing, University of Surrey

Where do you find your best inspiration for your work?

It comes through a process of reflecting on my own work over time. There is much to lear

Can you share with us some of your publications?

You can find my publications on the below sites.

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=EKVOAysAAAAJ&hl=en
or
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mukunthan_Tharmakulasingam/research

What’s one of your biggest personal achievements so far?

Awarded Zoetis and CVSSP studentship to pursue Ph.D.

What lessons would you share with a budding researcher?

Don’t give up on failures. Try to understand what has gone wrong. It can bring so much to learn.

According to your opinion, what are the changes that the Sri Lankan education system needs to do, in order to meet the requirement of the international industry and academia?

The current educational system is designed to create employees/Job seekers only. it doesn’t give the opportunity for innovation and entrepreneurship. It should be changed to create an environment and opportunity for innovations and entrepreneurship to give skills to create jobs.

Soft skills are not given importance in our educational system. To compete at the international level, these skills need to be developed through the educational system.