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Research & Publications

Research Centre of the Graduate Institute of Science and Management (GISM), Sri Lanka.

This centre, which is known as “GISM Research Group (GRG)”, was established in 2011 to promote applied research for solving real world problems in health, agriculture, manufacturing, communication and other sectors and industry. GRG has both local and overseas experts from different areas such as Science, Engineering, Applied Mathematics, Information Sciences, Management etc. to work together for solving critical problems in real world using multi-disciplinary approach.

This research centre in backed by GISM which is a higher education institute operates in Sri Lanka since 2010 as an education and research partner to many prestigious Universities and institutions in developed world including Massey University, New Zealand and Edinburgh Napier University, Scotland in the UK. This institute envisages promoting research and consultancy work in this country applying state-of-art technology with the help of experts in reputed overseas Universities.

In Sri Lanka, a large number of technical problems limit improvement of productivity in sectors such as agriculture, industry, health etc. Also there are many health problems such as Diabetics, Kidney diseases, Breast Cancer disease, Heart diseases that require further work for finding appropriate solutions. Problems that require solutions prevail everywhere in the world but many of these cases are specific to Sri Lanka due to identified and unidentified environmental, social and cultural influencing factors.  Hence, it is imperative that appropriate research projects are conducted to understand the causes, effect and influencing factors first and then find appropriate solutions to these pressing problems.

I am pleased to inform you that our research forum envisages providing our service to work on some problems in Sri Lanka. Following are some cases we take up seriously to work on:

 

  1. Study and understand the exact cause/s of kidney disease prevailing in some areas of the country and find appropriate technical solutions to the health problem that reduces the life span of the people.
  2. Find most critical influencing factors of diabetes in Sri Lanka and introduce methodologies to reduce the number of patients who suffer from this disease. We also wish to collaborate with experts from both local and western medication systems to find solutions and develop successful treatments.
  3. As breast cancer is another deadly disease in our country, GRG envisages to developing methods using modern techniques for early detection of breast tumors and find successful treatments.
  4. Heart disease: As most of the cases relate to health problems in family history, eating habits, stress, alcohol and smoking addiction etc., efficient and accurate investigating systems are required to protect people from this disease. Thus, a proper study is needed to model and analyse data, specific to our people, using mathematical and signal processing techniques.

 

Apart from these cases, GRG has expertise to undertake research and consultancy work relate to other areas such education and training, engineering and application, meditation and spiritual treatment etc. to help people to upgrade their living standard while supporting the industry to grow for economic development of the country.

The GRG headed by Director–Research will coordinate with public and private organizations to address their problems (technical or otherwise) which affect their production qualitatively and/or quantitatively. GRG maintains a data bank of resource persons to work with GISM on full time or part time basis to support the research projects undertaken by GRG. Based on the type of the problem, a group of research scientists will be appointed by the GRG to work on the problem/issue confronted by the organization and follow up until the expected outcomes are achieved.

 

 

Other Research Projects:

In-line monitoring and controlling the withering process in Tea Industry

Withering process is the most important part in black tea manufacture. The removal of moisture in green tea leaves is carried out by blowing hot air through the green tea leaves under a controlled process.  This process is required to trigger a series of bio-chemical reactions in tea leaves. The quality of the final product directly depends upon this withering process. The enzymatic changes are ultimately responsible for the production of various bio-chemicals desired for achieving quality parameters in the final outcome.  Therefore, there has been a significant demand for developing an appropriate automation system for this important process.

 

Develop a software and use for the hotel sector

This is an application in a i-pad or similar kept in the table for customers who come to the hotel to take meals or refreshments. They can see the food items available at the hotel and order the items they like. All the information of the items are available in the i-pad including the price, others’ comments etc. The orders will directly go the kitchen.

This software can be developed if any costumer in the hotel sector is interested.

 

Three-D Image building.

This application is to build a 3-D image of an object using few photo images taken around the object at selected and pre assigned locations vertically and horizontally in certain grid points. The image data will be processed using special algorithms to obtain a meaningful 3-D image.

This outcome can be used in fashion design industry and marketing industry but can be used for generating 3-D image of the objects of interest in general.

 

Microwave Cancer Detection for Early Stage Diagnosis of a Breast tumor

 Measurements using microwave signals can reveal important information about the properties of the scattering media. According to previous experimental results, the properties of normal and malignant tissues, such as permittivity and conductivity, have significant differences, offering great promise as a basis for microwave detection techniques for breast screening. With the help of a suitable inverse algorithm, it may be possible to detect and compute the size and the location of a malignant tumour using in-vivo microwave measurements. We propose a simple and cost-effective technique, and with further developments, this method may be used to detect a tumour before proceeding to other diagnosis processes. In this approach, breast compression is not required because the information about the tumour, if any, can be found using the ratio of the field quantities of the forward and reflected signals measured at the same antenna position. This is the reflection coefficient. The method is safe for breast screening because we use a low power microwave signal and therefore it does not harm the normal breast tissue.

 

  1. Senaratne, R. B. Keam and W. L. Sweatman, Inverse Solutions to Microwave Scattering Problem for Breast Tumour Detection and Size Estimation, Proceedings of the RSPS 2010 International Conference, K. L. University, A. P., India, RSPS 2010 International Conference, K. L. University, A. P., India, pp. 411-416, 09 January 2010.
  2. G. Senaratne, R. B. Keam, W. L. Sweatman, G. C. Wake and R. Simpkin, An inverse method for detection of a foreign object using microwave measurements, IET International Journal on Science, Measurements and Technology, 3, Issue 2, pp. 148-158, March 2009.
  3. G. G. Senaratne, Microwave Signal Processing for Foreign Object Identification, PhD Thesis, The Institute of Information and Mathematical Sciences, Massey University, New Zealand, August 2008.
  4. G. G. Senaratne, R. B. Keam, W. L. Sweatman and G. C. Wake, Solutions to the inverse problem with potential application for breast tumour detection using microwave measurements, International Journal on Computational and Mathematical Methods in Medicine, 08, no. 4, pp. 245-261, (2007).
  5. Senaratne, Mukhopadhyay S. C, Investigation of the interaction of planar electromagnetic sensor with dielectric materials at radio frequencies, Proceeding of the Fifth ISEMA Conference on Wave Interaction with Water and Moisture Substances, 95-99, (2003).
  6. C. Mukhopadhyay, J. D. Woolley, G. Senaratne, G. Sengupta and S.Yamada, Experimental observation of the effect of dielectric materials on the transfer impedance of planar electromagnetic sensors, Proceeding of ENDE, (2003).
  7. C. Mukhopadhyay, J. D. Woolley, G. Senaratne and S.Yamada, Electromagnetic field computation of planar mesh type sensor to evaluate near-surface material properties, Proceeding of the ENDE, (2003).
  8. C. Mukhopadhyay, G. Senaratne, J. D. M. Woolley and S.Yamada, Feasibility study of on-line monitoring and quality control of dairy foods using high performance planar electromagnetic sensors, Proceeding of the ISEM, New Zealand, 316-317, (2003).
  9. B. Keam and G. G. Senaratne, Microwave moisture and salt measurement for the New Zealand dairy industry, Proceeding of the 5th ISEMA Conference on Wave Interaction with Water and Moisture Substances, New Zealand, 369-376, (2003).

 

Signal Processing for communications and electronics, Multi-media broadcasting, Eldercare, RF Engineering, Radio and Video Broadcasting, Analogue and Digital signal processing, Electrical, Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering, RF Technologies, Microwave Link Design, Frequency Spectrum Planning and Management, Image and Video Quality assessment and monitoring, Image and Video codec benchmarking.

 

Researchers:

Dr. Amal Punchihewa    Amal Punchihewa (AM’1989 – M’1992 – F’2002 of IET, C.Eng) was born in Sri Lanka in 1963. He obtained a Bachelor of Engineering, specializing in Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering, from the University of Moratuwa in Katubedda, Sri Lanka, with honours in 1986. In 1991 he completed a Master of Electronics Engineering at the Technical University of Eindhoven, The Netherlands, focusing on digital video signal processing. Amal has worked as an engineer in both academia and industry over the past twenty-four years, starting as a computer engineer in 1986. After three years he moved to the broadcast industry, working as a research engineer for the national television broadcaster in Sri Lanka. In 1994 he became a senior lecturer at the University of Moratuwa, before migrating to New Zealand in 2002, where he joined Massey University in Palmerston North. His PhD was on framework for rapid evaluation of image and video compression artefacts objectively. He is a senior lecturer and his current research interests are objective assessment of compression artefacts and image processing for surveillance, multimedia communication and care of the elderly. Amal is a fellow and a registered-chartered professional engineer of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, a member of Institution of Professional Engineers New Zealand, and a life member of the Sri Lanka Association for Advancement of Science. In 2000 he was awarded the Wimalasurendra award in recognition of the contribution he made to the broadcasting development by the Institution of Engineers Sri Lanka.

  1. Punchihewa, G., & Keerl, A. (2011). Design of a synthetic test sequence and a metric system for evaluation of mosquito noise due to video codecs. In The 6th International Symposium on Electronic Design, Test and Applications (pp. 39-44). Queenstown, New Zealand: IEEE. doi:10.1109/DELTA.2011.61
  2. Punchihewa, G. (2010). Tutorial on digital terrestrial television broadcasting. In 5th International Conference on Information and Automation for Sustainability (pp. 58-63). Colombo, Sri Lanka: IEEE. doi:10.1109/ICIAFS.2010.5715635

III. Punchihewa, G. A., Armstrong, J., Hangai, S., & Hamamoto, T. (2009). Objective evaluation of components of colour distortions due to image compression. IEICE Transactions on Fundamentals of Electronics, Communications and Computer Sciences, (12), 3307-3312. doi:10.1587/TRANSFUN.E92.A.3307

  1. Abrar, M., Gui, X., Punchihewa, G. A., Khan, S., & Iqbal, M. (2010). Cooperative diversity versus antenna diversity in wireless communication systems. In 4th International Conference on New Traditions in Information Sciences and Service Science (NISS) 2010 (pp. 260-263). Gyeongju, South Korea: IEEE.
  2. Rusli, M. E., Harris, R., & Punchihewa, A. (2010). Markov Chain-based analytical model of opportunistic routing protocol for wireless sensor networks. In IEEE Region 10 Annual International Conference, Proceedings/TENCON (pp. 257-262).

 

Professor Dr. G. G. Senaratne

  1. T. Clive Marsh, Paul Milliken, Senaratne G. G, Developing an understanding of washing machine dynamics, Proceeding of the Mathematics-In-Industry Study Group, Massey University, New Zealand, 133-152, (2006).
  2. McGuinness, D. Jenkins and S. G. G, Modelling the physics of high-speed weighing., Proceeding of the 2005 Mathematics-In-Industry Study Group, Massey University, New Zealand, 24-28, 143-162, (2005).
  3. G. Senaratne, Security and Identification, Human Resources Guide, Sri Lanka Telecom. Sri Lanka, (2000).
  4. G. Senaratne, Product requirement specification for high quality spectrum analyser’, DSP manufacturing engineering, in Manufacturing Engineering, University of Westminster, UK, (1994).
  5. G. Senaratne, Mobile communications, Training reference guide, training centre, Sri Lanka Telecom., (1996).

 

 

Professor Dr. Tilak Liyanage

 Dr Liyanage C De Silva has received BSc Eng(Hons) degree from the University of Moratuwa Sri Lanka in 1985, MPhil degree from The Open University of Sri Lanka in 1989, MEng and PhD degrees from the University of Tokyo, Japan in 1992 and 1995 respectively. He was with the University of Tokyo, Japan, from 1989 to 1995. From April 1995 to March 1997 he has pursued his postdoctoral research as a researcher at ATR (Advanced Telecommunication Research) Laboratories, Kyoto, Japan. In March 1997 he has joined The National University of Singapore as a Lecturer where he was an Assistant Professor till June 2003. He was with the Massey University, New Zealand from 2003 to 2007. Currently he is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Science at the University of Brunei Darussalam.

Liyanage’s current research interests are Image and Speech Signal Processing (in particular multi modal emotion recognition and speech emotion analysis), Digital Communication (CDMA, OFDMA etc.), Information theory (source coding), Pattern recognition and understanding (biometric identification), Multimedia signal processing, and Smart Sensors (Smart environments for security, eldercare and energy efficiency) for more than 15 years of teaching and close to 24 years of postgraduate experience in various levels in his career in the Asia Pacific region.

Liyanage has published over 150 technical papers in these areas in international conferences, journals and Japanese national conventions and holds one Japanese national patent, which was successfully sold to Sony Corporation Japan for commercial utilization. This particular patent was in the area of bimodal emotion recognition and will be utilized in human computer interaction in computer game interfaces. Liyanage’s works have been cited as one of the pioneering work in the bimodal (audio and video signal based) emotion recognition by many researchers that are evident in his author impact analysis given later in the Curriculum Vitae. His papers so far have been cited by more than 950 times (according to scholar.google.com) with an h-index of 14 and a g-index of 29 according to http://www.harzing.com/.

He has received the Best Student Paper Award from SPIE (The International Society for Optical Engineering) for an outstanding paper contribution to the International Conference on Visual Communication and Image Processing (VCIP) in 1995. He has also received National University of Singapore, the Department of ECE Teaching commendation award in 2001 and 2002 consecutively. He is a senior member of IEEE USA. He was the General Chair of the 4th International Conference Computational Intelligence and Robotics and Autonomous Systems (CIRAS2007) held in New Zealand.

 

Research Interests:

Digital Signal Processing (Image processing and Speech Processing), Smart Homes for Energy Efficiency

Five recent publications

  1. Tin Lay Nwe, Foo Say Wei, & Liyanage C De Silva, “Speech Emotion Recognition Using HMMs”, in Elsevier Speech Comm Journal Vol. 41, Issue 4, pp. 603-623, Nov 2003.
  2. C R De Silva, S Ranganath, Liyanage C De Silva, “Cloud Basis Function Network: A Modified RBF Network Architecture for Holistic Facial Expression Recognition”, published in the Elsevier Pattern Recognition Journal, Volume 41 ,  Issue 4 , pp 1241-1253, April 2008.
  3. Liyanage C De Silva, “Audiovisual Sensing of Human Movements for Home-care and Security in a Smart Environment”, published in the International Journal on Smart Sensing and Intelligent Systems, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 220-245, March 2008.
  4. Prahlad Vadakkepat, Peter Lim, Liyanage C De Silva, Liu Jing, and Li Li Ling, “Multi-Modal Approach to Human Face Detection and Tracking”, published in the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, Vol 55, No 3, pp. 1385-1393, March 2008.
  5. Liyanage C De Silva, Titty Dewana, M Iskandar Petra, G Amal Punchihewa, “Multiple Sensor Based Autonomous Monitoring and Control for Energy Efficiency“, published as a chapter in a Springer book series titled Communications in Computer and Information Science, P Vadakkepat, J. H. Kim et.al (editors), Vol. 103, ISBN: 978-3-642-15809-4, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-15810-0, pp 361-368, 2010 (Springer).

 

 

4.5 Business and Management

Researcher: Professor Sarath Dassanayake

Dr S.W.S.B.Dasanayaka is a Full Professor for the Department of Management of Technology in the Faculty of Engineering in the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka (www.mot.mrt.ac.lk). Currently he is spending part of his sabbatical leave in College of Business in University of Utara Malaysia as a full professor for Business School (www.cob.uum.edu.my). He is the Founder/Chairman for Universal Engineering and Management Consultant Pvt Ltd., (www.econtechlk.com) and Dean – Graduate School of Science and Management (GISM) affiliated to Massey University NZ (www.gismlk.com). He earned his B.A Economics four year special degree in Econometrics from Peradaniya University, Sri Lanka (www.pdn.ac.lk) and Master degree from IISS of Erasmus University, Hague (www.iss.nl) and PhD from Erasmus University of Rotterdam (www.eur.nl, www.rsm.nl) in the Netherlands in the areas of Industrial Economics and Management. He obtained post-doctoral training on Technology Management and Entrepreneurship from UK, USA and Pakistan. He has served for industry and academia for over 26 years and carried-out many international professorial level academic and consultancy assignments in various parts of the world. His latest professorial assignments: Senior Foreign Professor Pakistan Higher Education Commission, Professor of Business Economics and Technology Management for Sharda University G. Noida, India and Adjunct Professor for Centrum, Lima, Peru. His industry experience started with Senior Trade Commissioner for British Trade and Diplomatic Service, UK by looking after Sri Lanka and Maldives markets and many Consultancy assignments for Asian Development Bank and World Bank projects in Sri Lanka and Pakistan. He has authored 4 books, published over 35 international indexed journal articles, 10 book chapters and over 100 international conference papers and abstracts and many consultancy reports. Please see www.mot.mrt.ac.lk for his brief resume.

 Area of research  His current research interests include Engineering, Energy, Industrial and Managerial Economics, Micro, Macro, Development and International Economics, Management of Technology and Innovation, Transport, Logistics and Maritime Economics, Entrepreneurship,  Capital Budgeting and Risk Analysis, Project Management, research methods, project feasibility studies, business plans, PPMS for transport projects and base line surveys and SMEs.

 

 

4.6 Microbiology and Biotechnology

Researchers: C. Stanley Weeraratna  –

Area/s of research_ Soil Fertility, soil Management, Organic Agriculture, Pollution, Pesticides,
I have a B.Sc Agric. degree from the University of Sri Lanka and a Ph.D degree from the Univ. of London (Wye College). During the last 40 years, I was involved in teaching, research and development  in agriculture. In the area of teaching,  I held the positions of Senior Lecturer Agric. Chemsitry, at University of Peradeniya, (1972-1980), Professor and Head – Department of Agronomy, Ruhuna University, Sri lanka (1980-1984); Senior Lecturer & Head – Department of Basic Science in School of Agriculture, University of South Pacific, Western Samoa, (1988-1992); and Professor – Faculty of Agriculture, Rajarata University, Sri Lanka (2001-2003

I have also been involved in agricultural research since 1967. I was at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines during 1980,  where I conducted research on nitrogen fertilizer losses in rice soils. I was a FAO expert in Soil Fertility and Soil Microbiology attached to the National Soil, Service Laboratory in Ethiopia. I have published around 30 research papers in international journals. These research studies were mainly on organic and inorganic fertilizers, pesticide use, environmental pollution and soil management.

During 2005-2006, as a consultant to the Minister of Agriculture, I was involved in developing the agricultural policy of the Sri Lanka Government. Also, as Chairman, Sugarcane Research Board (2004-2009) I was involved in developing the policies in the sugar sector development of Sri Lanka. I was a consultant to around 20 agricultural development projects carried out in Sri lanka.

I was Director, Advisory Services Dept. of Rubber Research Board (1984-88) and Director – Agricultural Development,  Samurdhi Authority (1995-1999) Thus, I have around ten years experience in management/administration of agricultural development projects

 

Recent publications:

  • Weeraratna, C.S, Watson, M and Wettasingha, D.T. Effect of mineralization of tea prunings on some soil characters. Plant and Soil 46: 93-99
  • Weeraratna, C.S and Craswell, E.T. Nitrogen losses from labelled ammonium sulphate and urea applied to a flooded rice soil. Fert. Res. 6: 199-203
  • Craswell, E.T. de Datta, S.K., Weeraratna, C.S and Vlek, L.G. Fate and efficiency of nitrogen fertilizers applied to wetland rice. Fert. Res. 6: 49-63 .
  • Tekle-Haimanot, A., C.S.Weeraratna, and E.V.Doku., Evaluation of three tree legume species in Western Samoa, Nitrogen Fixing Tree Res. Reports.9: 71-74
  • Weeraratna, S and Asghar,M. A study of the effects of grass and dadap mulches on some soil (an Inceptisol) properties and yield of taro (Colocasia esculenta (L.) Schott) in Western Samoa. Trop. Agriculture. 69: 83-88

 

Researcher: Dr. El-Mansi

Dr. El-Mansi is a graduate of the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, UK, PhD (Microbial Biochemistry and Molecular Enzymology, 1982). Following his PhD, he joined the University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK as a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow.  After nearly 10 years of post-doctoral research at Glasgow University, Dr. El-Mansi Joined Edinburgh Napier University, as a lecturer in Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology, where he spent some 17 years on research and teaching in Biotechnology.  After such extensive experience in research and teaching in Edinburgh, Dr. El-Mansi worked as a Director of Bio-Ed UK Ltd before joining Sharda University, India as a professor of Biotechnology.

In addition to extensive list of publications in journals of high impact factors and the formulation of a new hypothesis on the role of free-CoA in central metabolism, Dr. El-Mansi is currently the Editor-in-Chief of Fermentation Microbiology and Biotechnology. Dr. El-Mansi is a referee on the boards of many journals and scientific societies.

 

Researcher: Dr. TANUJA NALIKA ARIYANANDA

Ph. D in Environmental Science ,University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka Title of the thesis: Temporal and Spatial Variations In Hydrogrphy, Plankton, Benthic Organism and Trophic Signatures of Dutch Canal and Mundel Lake During Intensive Shrimp Farming Practice.

MSc in Aquatic Resource Management King’s College, London. Title of the thesis: “Organotin (anti-foulant) in the surface microlayer and subsurface waters of marinas and estuaries in South-west England”.  This was conducted at Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML). Dr. Tanuja is currently the Director, Lanka Rain water Harvesting Forum, No.28/3 A, Subadrarama Lane, Nugegoda, Sri Lanka Project development and management, including administration, finance and reporting, conducting research and development activities related to water quality, rainwater harvesting technology and social and economic aspects )

Memberships in Scientific Societies

Chartered Member of the Institute of Biology (IoB), London, UK since 1993

Member of Sri Lanka Association Fisheries and Aquatic Resources

Member of Sri Lanka Association for Advancement of Science.

Member of the Ministerial Committee for Developing Policy and Strategy for Rain Water Harvesting in Sri Lanka.

 

Scientific Publications

  1. Water quality of Dutch canal from Deduru oya estuary to Mundel lake : area of extensive shrimp farming, SLAAS annual sessions, Dec. 1997
  2. A New Genus and Species of Apseudomorph Tanaidacean from Sri Lanka, Asian Marine Biology 13 (1996): 133-140
  3. Water Quality Of Brackish Water Ecosystem From Dederu Oya To Mundel Lake:Area Of Extensive Shrimp Farming, National Conference on future direction of water research in Sri Lanka, 4-6 November 1998
  4. The male of Halmyrapseudes Srilankaensis (Bacescu, 1981) Comb. Nov. and Analysis of Genus Halmyrapseudes Bacescu and Gutu, 1974 ( Peracarida, Tanaidacea). J. of Crustacean Biology, 2002, 22(2): 287-297.