2018-09-02: Sampath Jayarathna (Assistant Professor, Computer Science)

I am really excited to be part of the Old Dominion University and the WS-DL group. I joined the faculty at Old Dominion University in 2018. Before that, I was a tenure-track assistant professor for two years at California State Polytechnic University (Cal Poly Pomona). I am truly grateful to Frank Shipman, Oleg Komogortsev, Richard Furuta, Dilma Da Silva and Cecelia Aragon for the help throughout this faculty search. It is sad to say goodbye to my colleagues at Cal Poly but I am excited to have an amazing bunch of mentors and colleagues here at ODU, Michael, Michele, Nikos, Ravi, Jian, Cong, Shubham, Anne and many more. Its truly amazing that I was able team up and put-together 2 NSF proposals (CRII and REU Site) within a short period of time.

I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science from Texas A&M University in 2016, advised by Frank Shipman. I was a member of the Center for the Study of the Digital Libraries (CSDL) group. In 2012, I did a 6 month internship at Knowledge Based Systems Inc., College Station, TX to build a Collaborative Analysis tool for JackalFish enterprise search tool. I earned MS degree from Texas State University-San Marcos in 2010. I worked with Oleg Komogortsev in the area of Oculomotor Systems research, eye tracking and Biomertrics using eye movements. I spent the summer 2009 at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and with Cecilia Aragon (currently professor at UW Seattle) and Deb Agarwal on a very cool eye movement based biometric project.

My undergraduate degree is a B.S in computer Science (First Class Honors, similar to Latin honor summa cum laude) from University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka in 2006. 

I am an avid gardener, my wife says I have a “green thumb”, something to do with coming from a tropical island. Most of my plants did not survive the 20 days west to east coast journey. 

Sri Lankan "King Coconut"

I grow variety of vegetables including tomato, water melon, leafy greens, chilies, and some exotic tropical fruits and vegies. It is exciting to see what I can do with long hot summers and 4-season weather. 

My academic Genealogy, Bucket List, Goodreads Bookshelf, YouTube playlist, IMDB lists of favorite TV-shows, and Movies.

--Sampath