2023-10-07: Rochana Obadage (Computer Science PhD Student)

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Hello! I’m Rochana Obadage from Sri Lanka, a newly joined member of the WS-DL group. Very recently I started my journey with the Web Science and Digital Libraries (WS-DL) research group at Old Dominion University (ODU) as a PhD student under the supervision of Dr. Jian Wu. According to the saying, “there is a first time for everything”, so far, the year 2023 has provided me with several exciting first-time experiences. Becoming an international student and being able to study at an R1 institute by joining ODU are at the top of this list.

For my very first year here at ODU, I am taking below courses for the Fall semester 2023.

Also, I am working as a Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) at the Department of Computer Science, ODU for the class CS462/562 Cybersecurity Fundamentals in this Fall 2023. Apart from the above course related work, and the part time GTA position, currently I am engaged with a proof-of-concept research project on AI Reproducibility which is related to the emerging research field “Science of Science”. 

Geethanjalee 2019
Before I moved to Norfolk, Virginia, my life revolved primarily around Sri Lanka. I graduated with a First class Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science as the highest ranked student in the year 2021 for Computer Science Special batch from the Faculty of Science, University of Peradeniya, the leading national university in Sri Lanka. As a recognition I received the University Award for Academic Excellence at the General Convocation 2020 (held in 2022). With pride, I can say that I did not accomplish my academic achievements all alone. I was able to engage in various extracurricular activities parallel to my studies during my undergraduate period, including being an Adventure Sports Instructor, the Junior Treasurer at University Explorers’ Club and the Computer Society University of Peradeniya. Organizing the biggest annual university musical concert, “Geethanjalee”, for three consecutive years proved to be a valuable source of experience too.

Working at University Explorers' Club

Since I wanted to offer something back to the place where I obtained my bachelor's degree, I joined the Department of Statistics and Computer Science, Faculty of Science University of Peradeniya. Within the very first month of my career as a Teaching Assistant, I was promoted to a Temporary Lecturer. At the same time I was appointed as a resource person at the Centre for Distance and Continuing Education, University Of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka.



Apart from working as a Full Time Temporary Lecturer, I have been working as a Machine Learning Engineer (remote-part-time) at Kaleris, a US based IT company in the Transport and Logistics domain to stay updated with the latest technology trends. That is where I obtained hands-on experiences at designing, development, and containerization of production grade CNN/NLP/OCR related microservices.


All in all, I feel privileged being able to join WS-DL which has such a diverse group of members from different countries and cultural backgrounds. From my own experiences, I understand that embracing these “first-time” experiences and getting adapted to those can be challenging. Yet, as the American poet, Maya Angelou once said “Be certain that you do not die without having done something wonderful for humanity”, and I plan to do that in the field of academia by becoming a well trained versatile researcher.


– Rochana R. Obadage


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