ScholarX — Savindi Wijenayaka
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Savindi Wijenayaka is majoring in Data Science and Distributed Computing at the University of Kelaniya and passionate about creating something new to help someone. She was mentored by Dr Rukshan Batuwita at the ScholarX Mentoring Program.
What motivated you to join the ScholarX program?
I was interested purely because of the mentors. They all were highly qualified people to become mentors. So I knew it will be a great opportunity for me if I get selected. Also since our degree program is quite a fresh one and we are the second batch, there is really no one whom we can take advice from other than our professors. Therefore this exposure was quite valuable to me.
Your Top 3 learnings from the ScholarX program?
1. What I should do regarding higher education
2. What sort of topic I should pick for research
3. Talking with like-minded colleagues from different universities and listening to their experiences made me realize my weak points and how can I improve myself
What are your plans after graduation?
I’m planning to do a PhD directly without doing an M.Sc. Therefore, trying my best to find a professor who will be willing to guide me.
It’s 2029, what are you up to?
I’m working on a research team who are building a device which can help differently able people. In the meantime, I’m having a nice time working with young people as a visiting lecturer. I try my best to give them an industry-ready skill set rather than just going by the book. I also went to 5 travelling destinations I dreamt of going to and ticked off 10 things out of my bucket list.
You have an unlimited pot of money. How would you invest this to improve the education system in Sri Lanka?
To be honest, if I have unlimited money, the first thing I will look at is helping my own degree program. We don’t even have a Hive to develop fully-fledged VR game. Students collect their own money to buy those things for learning and try out new technologies. Therefore I ‘ll first put my effort into giving them the required equipment and technologies.
Another thing I think that the lack in our education system is that we are too late compared to other countries. I’m 24 and I’m still in 4th year. But my cousin who is one year younger to me is now doing his masters and in 2nd year. If we can give proper career guidance to school kids instead of pushing them to be doctors and engineers and let them know there are lots of cool professions out there I think it’s great. We need to give them the proper exposure at an early age and should let them choose. This is nothing about investing money. To be honest I actually don’t know whether we can do this in our country.
