Thakshila Wimalajeewa
Contact
Information
Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer
Science
Syracuse University, 4-206 CST
Syracuse, NY 13244
Web: http://twwewelw.mysite.syr.edu/
Mobile: +1-505-264-7795
Fax: +1-315-443-2583
E-mail: twwewelw@syr.edu
Research Areas Statistical signal processing, Compressive sensing, Low-dimensional models for
Big Data analytic, Statistical inference, Mathematical optimization, Machine
learning, Signal processing and resource management in wireless communication
systems, Autonomous systems with human and machine agents
Education
The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA
Ph.D., Electrical and Computer Engineering
Dec 2009
• Dissertation: Mobility-Assisted, Energy-Efficient Algorithms for Distributed
Inference in Wireless Sensor Networks
• GPA: 4.0/4.0
M.S., Electrical and Computer Engineering
May 2008
• GPA: 4.0/4.0
The University of Moratuwa, Moratuwa, Sri Lanka
B.Sc., Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering
March 2004
• Honors: First Class Honors
• Class Rank: 04
• GPA: 3.91 / 4.00
Research
Experience
Research Assistant Professor
August 2012 - Present
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science,
Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY
Post Doctorate Research Associate
January 2010 - July 2012
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science,
Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY
Graduate Research Assistant
Aug 2006 - Dec 2009
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science,
The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM
Intern
Summer 2008
Space Data Systems Group, International, Space and Response Division,
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM
Research Assistant
Aug 2005 - July 2006
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
Wichita State University, Wichita, KS
Intern
Jan 2003 - May 2003
Suntel (Pvt.) Ltd., Colombo, Sri Lanka,
1 of 8
Teaching
Experience
Instructor
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science,
The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM
• Course: ECE 441-Principles of communications
Spring 2008
Teaching Assistant
Aug 2006 - Aug 2009
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science,
The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM
• Courses:
− ECE 314-Signals and systems, ECE 445-Introduction to control systems,
ECE 131-Programming fundamentals, ECE 231-Intermediate programming
and Engineering problem solving
Lecturer
July 2004 - Aug 2005
Department of Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering,
The University of Moratuwa, Moratuwa, Sri Lanka
• Courses:
− Basic electronics, Industrial electronics
Honors and
Distinctions
The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM
• Ranked 2nd , Ph.D. qualifying examination
Fall 2007
The University of Moratuwa, Moratuwa, Sri Lanka
• First Class Honors (B.Sc. in Engineering)
March 2004
• Ministry of higher education scholarship for undergraduate studies 2000 2004
Research
Grants
Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY
• Co-PI, (PI-Pramod K. Varshney), ‘High Quality/Low Dimension Data for
Sensor Integration’, DoD STTR Program, Air Force of Scientific Research
(AFOSR), through ANDRO Computational Solutions, LLC, Aug 2015, awarded
• Co-PI (PI-Pramod K. Varshney), ‘Compressive Sensing Based Inference
in Distributed Networks’, National Science Foundation (NSF), Division of
ECCS, Aug 16, 2013 - Aug 15, 2016, $324, 916, awarded
• Senior personnel, ‘Mission Prioritized Lossless Data Compression’, DoD
STTR Program, Air Force of Scientific Research (AFOSR), through Leskiw
Associates, 2011-2012, $46, 000, awarded
Student
Advising
− Research mentor to Swatantra Kafle, PhD student, Dept of EECS, Syracuse
University
− Research mentor to Bhavya Kailkhura, PhD student, Dept of EECS, Syracuse
University
− Research mentor to Nianxia Cao, PhD student, Dept of EECS, Syracuse
University
2 of 8
− Research mentor to Vipul Gupta, Summer intern, Dept of EECS, Syracuse
University, summer 2014
− Research mentor to Yujiao Zheng, PhD student, Dept of EECS, Syracuse
University, graduated Feb 2014
− Research mentor to Zhe Bai, MS student, Dept of MAE, Syracuse University,
Application of Compressive Sensing to Air Foil PIV data, 2011-2013
− Research mentor to Himanshu Gupta, Research intern, Dept of ECE, University
of New Mexico, A distributed data compression scheme for MICAz-based
wireless sensor networks, Summer 2008
Invited Talks
’Compressive Sensing Based Statistical Inference’, Los Alamos National Laboratory,
Los Alamos, NM, September 2012
’Distributed Signal Processing and Resource Management in Wireless Communication
Networks’, Florida International University, Department of Electrical and
Computer Engineering, Miami, Florida, March 2012
Book Chapters Thakshila Wimalajeewa, Sudharman K. Jayaweera and Carlos Mosquera,
“Multi-Sensor Data Fusion over Noisy Communication Channels”, Sensor and
Data Fusion, Open access online book, Edited by N. Milisavljevic, I-Tech
Education and Publishing, Vienna, Austria, Feb. 2009
Journal
Articles
Submitted/In Preparation (Student advisees are denoted by †)
- Thakshila Wimalajeewa, and Pramod K. Varshney, “Detection of Single vs
Multiple Antenna Transmission Systems Based on Pilot Data used for Symbol
Timing/Channel Estimation”, in preparation
- Thakshila Wimalajeewa, Yonina C. Eldar and Pramod K. Varshney, “Recovery
of Sparse Matrices via Matrix Sketching”, IEEE Signal Processing Letters,
submitted, June 2015
- † Bhavya Kailkhura, Sijia Liu, Thakshila Wimalajeewa and Pramod K. Varshney,
“Measurement Matrix Design for Compressive Detection with Secrecy Guarantees”,
IEEE Signal Processing Letters, submitted, June 2015
- † Bhavya Kailkhura, Thakshila Wimalajeewa and Pramod K. Varshney, “Collaborative
Compressive Detection with Physical Layer Secrecy Constraints”, IEEE Trans.
on Inform. Theory, submitted, Feb 2015
Published/Accepted
J17 Gang Li, Thakshila Wimalajeewa and Pramod K. Varshney, Decentralized
and Collaborative Subspace Pursuit: A Communication-Efficient Algorithm
for Joint Sparsity Pattern Recovery, IEEE Trans. Signal Processing, accepted
with minor revision, July 2015
J16 † Yujiao Zheng, † Nianxia Cao, Thakshila Wimalajeewa, and Pramod K.
Varshney, “Compressive Sensing based Probabilistic Sensor Management
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for Target Tracking in Wireless Sensor Networks”, IEEE Trans. Signal
Processing, accepted, July 2015
J15 Onur Ozdemir, Thakshila Wimalajeewa, Berkan Dulek, Pramod K. Varshney,
and Wei Su “Hybrid Maximum Likelihood Based Linear Modulation Classification
with Multiple Sensors via Generalized EM Algorithm”, IEEE Trans. Wireless
Communications, accepted, June 2015
J14 Thakshila Wimalajeewa, Yonina C. Eldar and Pramod K. Varshney, “Subspace
Detection from Structured Union of Subspaces via Linear Sampling”, IEEE
Trans. Information Theory, vol. 61, No. 4, pages 2101-2114, Apr 2015
J13 † Zhe Bai, Thakshila Wimalajeewa, Zachary Berger, Guannan Wang, Mark
Glauser, Pramod K. Varshney, ”A Low Dimensional Approach for Reconstruction
of Airfoil Data via Compressive Sensing”, The American Institute of Aeronautics
and Astronautics (AIAA) journal, vol. 53, No. 4, pp. 920-933, doi:
10.2514/1.J053287, Apr 2015
J12 Thakshila Wimalajeewa, and Pramod K. Varshney, “Wireless Compressive
Sensing Over Fading Channels with Distributed Sparse Random Projections”,
IEEE Trans. on Signal and Information Processing over Networks, vol. 1,
No. 1, Mar. 2015
J11 Thakshila Wimalajeewa and Pramod K. Varshney, “OMP Based Joint
Sparsity Pattern Recovery Under Communication Constraints”, IEEE Trans.
Signal Processing, vol. 62, No. 9, pages 5059-5072, Oct 2014
J10 Thakshila Wimalajeewa and Pramod K. Varshney, “Asymptotic Performance
of Categorical Decision Making with Random Thresholds”, IEEE Signal
Processing Letters, vol. 21, no. 8, pages 994-997, Aug 2014
J9 Thakshila Wimalajeewa and Pramod K. Varshney, “Collaborative Human
Decision Making with Random Local Thresholds”, IEEE Trans. Signal
Processing, vol.61, no.11, pages 2975-2989, June 2013
J8 Thakshila Wimalajeewa, Hao Chen and Pramod K. Varshney, ”Performance
Limits of Compressive Sensing-Based Signal Classification”, IEEE Trans.
Signal Processing., vol.60, no.6, pages 2758-2770, June 2012
J7 Thakshila Wimalajeewa and Pramod K. Varshney, ”Performance Bounds
for Sparsity Pattern Recovery with Quantized Noisy Random Projections”,
IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing, Special Issue on
Robust Measures and Tests Using Sparse Data for Detection and Estimation,
vol.6, no.1, pages 43-57, Feb. 2012
J6 Thakshila Wimalajeewa and Pramod K. Varshney, ”Polarity-CoincidenceArray Based Spectrum Sensing for Multiple Antenna Cognitive Radios in
the Presence of Non-Gaussian Noise”, IEEE Trans. Wireless Communications.,
vol.10, no.7, pages 2362-2371, July 2011
J5 Thakshila Wimalajeewa and Sudharman K. Jayaweera, “Distributive and
Collaborative Node Mobility Management for Dynamic Coverage Improvement
4 of 8
in Hybrid Sensor Networks”, EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications
and Networking., Article ID 724136, 17 pages, Feb 2011
J4 Thakshila Wimalajeewa and Sudharman K. Jayaweera, “Distributed Node
Selection for Sequential Estimation over Noisy Communication Channels”,
IEEE Trans. Wireless Communications., vol. 9, no. 7, pp 2290 - 2301, July
2010
J3 Thakshila Wimalajeewa and Sudharman K. Jayaweera, “Impact of mobile
node density on detection performance measures in a hybrid sensor network”,
IEEE Trans. Wireless Communications., vol. 9, no. 5, pp 1760-1769, May
2010
J2 Thakshila Wimalajeewa and Sudharman K. Jayaweera, “Distributed Detection
of Randomly Located Targets in Mobility-Assisted Sensor Networks with
Node Mobility Management”, EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal
Processing., Article ID: 695026, April 2010
J1 Thakshila Wimalajeewa and Sudharman K. Jayaweera, “Optimal Power
Scheduling for Correlated Data Fusion in Wireless Sensor Networks Via
Constrained PSO,” IEEE Trans. Wireless Communications., vol. 7, no. 9,
pp 3608-3618, Sep. 2008
Conference C24 † Vipul Gupta, † Bhavya Kailkhura, Thakshila Wimalajeewa and Pramod K.
Proceedings
Varshney, ’Joint Sparsity Pattern Recovery with 1-bit Compressive Sensing in
Distributed Sensor Networks’, 49th Annual Asilomar Conference on Signals,
Systems, and Computers , Nov 2015, to appear
C23 Thakshila Wimalajeewa, Jithin Jagannath, Pramod K. Varshney and Andrew
Drozd, “Distributed Asynchronous Modulation Classification Based on Hybrid
Maximum Likelihood Approach”, Military Communications Conference (MILCOM),
Tampa, FL, Oct 2015, to appear
C22 Thakshila Wimalajeewa and Pramod K. Varshney, “Asymptotic Performance
of Categorical Decision Making with Random Thresholds”, 40th International
Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP), Brisbane,
Australia, April 2015 (SP letter presentation)
C21 Gang Li, Hao Zhang, Thakshila Wimalajeewa and Pramod K. Varshney,
“On the Detection of Sparse Signals with Sensor Networks based on Subspace
Pursuit”, 2nd IEEE Global Conference on Signal and Information Processing
(GlobalSip), Atlanta, GA, Dec 2014
C20 † Bhavya Kailkhura, Thakshila Wimalajeewa and Pramod K. Varshney, “On
Physical Layer Secrecy of Collaborative compressive Detection”, 48th Annual
Asilomar Conf. on Signals, Systems and Computers, Nov 2014 († Runner-up
Best Student Paper Contest )
C19 † Bhavya Kailkhura, Thakshila Wimalajeewa, Lixin Shen and Pramod K.
Varshney, “Distributed Compressive Detection with Perfect Secrecy”, 2nd Int.
Workshop on Compressive Sensing in Cyber-Physical Systems (CSCPS’14) ,
Oct 2014
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C18 Svetlana Foulke, Jithin Jagannath, Andrew Drozd, Thakshila Wimalajeewa,
Pramod K. Varshney, and Wei Su, “Multisensor Modulation Classification
(MMC) implementation considerations - USRP case study”, Military Communications
Conference (MILCOM), Baltimore, MD, Oct 2014
C17 † Yujiao Zheng, Thakshila Wimalajeewa and Pramod K. Varshney, “Probabilistic
sensor management for target tracking via compressive sensing”, 39th International
Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP), Florence,
Italy, May 2014
C16 Gang Li, Thakshila Wimalajeewa and Pramod K. Varshney, “Decentralized
subspace pursuit for joint sparsity pattern recovery”, 39th International Conference
on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP), Florence, Italy, May
2014
C15 Thakshila Wimalajeewa and Pramod K. Varshney, “Cooperative Sparsity
Pattern Recovery in Distributed Networks Via Distributed-OMP”, 38th International
Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP), Vancouver,
Canada, May 2013
C14 Mark Glauser, Pramod Varshney, Thakshila Wimalajeewa, † Zhe Bai, Zachary
Berger, and Guannan Wang, Application of Compressive Sensing to NACA
4412 PIV Data. AIAA Paper 2013-0772, 2013 AIAA ASM Conference, Dallas,
Texas, January 7-10, 2013 (invited)
C13 † Zhe Bai, Thakshila Wimalajeewa, Zachary Berger, Mark Glauser, and Pramod
K. Varshney “Physics Based Compressive Sensing Approach Applied to Airfoil
Data Collection and Analysis”, 65th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of
Fluid Dynamics , Vol. 57, San Diego, CA, November, 2012
C12 Thakshila Wimalajeewa and Pramod K. Varshney, “Collaborative Human
Decision Making with Imperfect Knowledge of Individual Thresholds”, 15th
Int. Conf. on Information fusion, Singapore, July, 2012
C11 Thakshila Wimalajeewa and Pramod K. Varshney, “A Non-parametric Approach
for Spectrum Sensing with Multiple Antenna Cognitive Radios in the Presence
of Non-Gaussian Noise”, IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking
Conference, (WCNC), Cancun, Mexico, March, 2011
C10 Thakshila Wimalajeewa and Sudharman K. Jayaweera, “A Distributed Mobility
Protocol for Dynamic Coverage Improvement in Sensor Networks”, IEEE
Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM), Miami, FL, Dec. 2010
C9 Thakshila Wimalajeewa, Hao Chen and Pramod K. Varshney, “Performance
Analysis of Stochastic Signal Detection with Compressive Measurements”,
44th Annual Asilomar Conf. on Signals, Systems and Computers, Pacific
Grove, CA, Nov, 2010
C8 Thakshila Wimalajeewa and Sudharman K. Jayaweera, “Mobility Assisted
Distributed Tracking in Hybrid Sensor Networks”, 29th IEEE Int. Conf. on
Communications (ICC), Cape Town, South Africa, May 2010
6 of 8
C7 Thakshila Wimalajeewa and Sudharman K. Jayaweera, “Trade-off Between
Mobile Node Density and Detection Performance in Hybrid Sensor Networks
with Random Node Mobility”, 5th International Conference on Intelligent
Sensors, Sensor Networks and Information Processing (ISSNIP), Melbourne,
Australia, Dec. 2009
C6 Thakshila Wimalajeewa and Sudharman K. Jayaweera, “Sequential Estimation
Over Noisy Channels with Distributed Node Selection”, Military Communications
Conference (MILCOM), Boston, MA, Oct. 2009
C5 Sudharman K. Jayaweera and Thakshila Wimalajeewa , “Optimal Sensor
Placement for Distributed Detection of a Randomly-Located Target in the
Presence of Fading”, Military Communications Conference (MILCOM), San
Diego, CA, Nov. 2008
C4 Thakshila Wimalajeewa and Sudharman K. Jayaweera, “Power Efficient
Distributed Estimation in a Bandlimited Wireless Sensor Network,”, 41st
Annual Asilomar Conf. on Signals, Systems and Computers, Pacific Grove,
CA, Nov. 2007
C3 Thakshila Wimalajeewa and Sudharman K. Jayaweera, “PSO for Constrained
Optimization: Optimal Power Scheduling for Correlated Data Fusion in Wireless
Sensor Networks”, 18th IEEE International symposium on Personal, Indoor,
Mobile and Radio Communications (PIMRC’07), Athens, Greece, Sep. 2007
C2 Thakshila Wimalajeewa and Sudharman K. Jayaweera, “Power Scheduling
for Correlated Data Fusion in Wireless Sensor Networks”, 66th IEEE Vehicular
Technology Conference (VTC’07 - Fall), Baltimore, MD, USA, Oct. 2007
C1 Thakshila Wimalajeewa and Sudharman K. Jayaweera, “Optimal Power
Scheduling for Decision Fusion in Inhomogeneous Wireless Sensor Networks”,
IEEE International Conference on Advanced Video and Signal-based Surveillance
(AVSS), Sydney, Australia, Nov. 2006
Technical
Reports
T2 Thakshila Wimalajeewa and Pramod K. Varshney, “Polarity-CoincidenceArray Based Spectrum Sensing for Multiple Antenna Cognitive Radios in
the Presence of Non-Gaussian Noise”, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and
Computer Science, Syracuse University, No: SYR-EECS-2011-01, Jan. 2011
T1 Thakshila Wimalajeewa, Sean Brennan and Amy Galbraith, “Vehicle Classification
from Seismic Data using Discrete Wavelet Transform”, Los Alamos National
Laboratory, Release No: LA-UR-08-06389, 2008
Poster
Presentations
Thakshila Wimalajeewa and Pramod K. Varshney, “Collaborative Human
Decision Making with Imperfect Information”, Interdisciplinary Workshop
on Information and Decision in Social Networks (WIDS), Laboratory for
Information and Decision Systems, MIT, MA, Nov. 2012
Professional
Activities
TPC member:
− The 4th International Conference on Connected Vehicles & Expo (ICCVE),
2015
7 of 8
− IEEE Global Communications conference (Globecom), 2015
− IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), 2015
− IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC), 2015,
2013, 2014
− First national conference on Technology and management, SLIIT Malabe
campus, Sri Lanka, Jan. 2012
Conference session chair:
− 11th IEEE International Conference on Mobile Ad hoc and Sensor Systems,
Session: ’Algorithms and Theory’, Oct 2014, Philadelphia, PA
Paper reviewer for:
− IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing
− IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications
− IEEE Transactions on Communications
− IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications - Cognitive Radio Series
− IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology
− IEEE Communication Letters
− IEEE Signal Processing Letters
− IEEE Wireless Communication Letters
− several conferences (ICC, WCNC, MILCOM, VTC)
Member of IEEE
Technical Skills − Embedded programming: Micro-controller, MICAz/MICA2 motes, ARM
processors
− Programming languages: C, C++, NesC, Assembly
− Tools/Simulators: MATLAB, ns2
− Operating systems: Linux, Windows, TinyOS
Immigration
Status
− Sri Lankan Citizen
− US Permanent Resident
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Last modified August 10, 2015
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