Meet Sri Lankan Researcher — Sohani Liyanage

What are you currently working on or worked on before?

Currently working on developing and evaluating simulation models for dynamic on-demand ride-sharing systems. Specifically, the project will develop a robust, scalable dynamic network model for on-demand bus services for Melbourne. This work applies machine learning and artificial intelligence methodologies to predict the future demand for such services to provide smart cities with sustainable transport and efficient urban mobility.

What encouraged you to pursue your research topic?

Improving transport system efficiency and help to recognize and choose daily mobility options. Enabling personalized services that have seamless trip chains by integrating different transport modes, reducing the popularity of private cars by increasing the demand for flexible choices such as car-sharing and ride-sharing services. Increasing customer satisfaction by providing sustainable transport modes as a door-to-door service is the main encouragement to pursue my research topic.

This, in turn, will result in improved network utilization, reduced congestion, and increasing revenues from existing assets. By smoothing traffic operations, vehicle emissions and noise pollution can also be reduced to the benefit of the surrounding communities.

What is the name of your current institute?

Swinburne University of Technology

Where do you find your best inspiration for your work?

The reform of urban mobility continues to present decision-makers and governments around the world with a number of key challenges to improve mobility and provide people with better ways to access jobs, education and economic opportunities. In recent years, the fast pace of developments in digital platforms and innovations have seen new business models and solutions being introduced such as flexible mobility-on-demand services. This inspires me to contribute to the development and testing of theories and models to explain and predict the performance by analysing the technological, social, and economic impacts surrounding technology-driven shared mobility trends.

Can you share with us some of your publications?

You can find my work by below-given URLs.

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/5/1262 https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/1/189 https://engineer.sljol.info/articles/abstract/10.4038/engineer.v51i4.7312/

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

Academically, the biggest achievement is receiving the SUPRA award and full scholarship to pursue my PhD at the Swinburne University of Technology. Also, successfully completion of my Masters of Engineering in Transportation Engineering with an “Excellent” grade for the Master’s thesis from the Asian Institute of Technology.

What lessons would you share with a budding researcher?

The main lesson I would like to share is, be patience about your work, as research journey is a definite roller coaster. Also, keep yourself self-motivated and be very much updated about your research field.

What motivated you to be a researcher?

Since as a high school student, I am curious to learn something new and challenge myself to innovate something that’d be beneficial for society. I always motivated to read about industrial state of art solutions to the world’s mobility challenges and how well users accept them. This life long interest leads me to work in research related to sustainable mobility, transportation engineering.

If there is a chance, will you help build research in Sri Lanka?

Yes, absolutely

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?

Sri Lankan education system needs to be updated where students can learn through practical experiments. Students need to be encouraged to do more innovations and those should be properly acknowledged.

Students and early researches should be given the opportunity to access to new technologies, be updated about latest innovations around the world.

What are your suggestions to the Sustainable Education Foundation to improve the education system in Sri Lanka?

to be a more active engaging platform to meet researchers around the world and to collaborate on each others’ works.