Curriculum Vitae
Piyadi Gamage Jayani Lakshika
Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics
Monash University, Australia
Email: jayani.piyadigamage@monash.edu, jayanilakshika76@gmail.com
Website: https://jayanilakshika.netlify.app/
GitHub: https://github.com/JayaniLakshika
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayani-lakshika-9a0297162
Education
PhD candidate - Statistics
Faculty of Business & Economics, Monash University, Australia
Thesis title: Interactive and Dynamic Graphics for Studying Non-linear Dimension Reduction Models of High-dimensional Data
July 2022 —
B.Sc. (Honours) in Statistics
University of Sri Jayewardenepura (USJ), Sri Lanka
Thesis title: Computer Vision System For Automated Medicinal Plant Identification
January 2017 — December 2020
Diploma in Computer System Design (DCSD)
National Institute of Business Management (NIBM), Sri Lanka
March 2016 — March 2017
Certificate in Business Accounting
Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA), Sri Lanka
December 2015 — September 2016
Appointments Held
Teaching Associate
Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics, Monash University, Australia
January 2023 —
Teaching Assistant (Temporary Instructor)
University of Sri Jayewardenepura (USJ), Sri Lanka
July 2021 — July 2022
Associate Data Analyst
Vizuamatix (Pvt) Ltd, Sri Lanka
January — November 2021
Trainee Data Analyst
Vizuamatix (Pvt) Ltd, Sri Lanka
July—December 2020
Research Internship
Vizuamatix (Pvt) Ltd, Sri Lanka
Industrial training as a fulfillment of the degree B.Sc. (Honours) in Statistics
January — June 2020
Publications
Papers
Lakshika, J. P., & Talagala, T. S. (2021). Computer-aided Interpretable Features for Leaf Image Classification. arXiv preprint arXiv:2106.08077
Conference proceedings
Young Scientists’ Conference on Multidisciplinary Research (YCMR) abstract publication (ISSN 2815-0260)
October 2021
September 2021
Conference presentations and contributed talks
Visualise your fitted non-linear reduction model in high-dimensional space
2025 Joint Statistical Meetings, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
2025
Generating interesting high-dimensional data structures
UseR! 2025, Penn Pavilion, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA
2025
Visualise your fitted non-linear reduction model in high-dimensional space
Data Science Club, University of Nebraska, Omaha (UNO), USA
2024
Visualise your fitted non-linear reduction model in high-dimensional space
Graphics Group, University of Nebraska, Licoln (UNL), USA
2024
Visualise your fitted non-linear reduction model in high-dimensional space
UseR! 2024, Salzburg, Austria
2024
Visualising how non-linear dimension reduction warps your data
Faculty of BusEco Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition, Monash University, Australia
2024
Visualise your fitted non-linear dimension reduction model in the high-dimensional data space
Victorian branch of the Australian and New Zealand Industrial and Applied Mathematics Society (VicANZIAM) 2024 (RMIT university, Melbourne, Australia)
2024
Visualize your fitted non-linear dimension reduction model in the high-dimensional data space — Invited speaker
Bioinformatics Seminar, Monash University, Australia
2024
With non-linear dimension reduction, when can you believe what you see?
Australian Statistical Conference (ASC 2023) (Wollongon, Australia)
2023
Viewing the model from a non-linear dimension reduction in the high-dimensional data space — Invited speaker
12th-Conference of the Asian Regional Section of the International Association for Statistical Computing (IASC-ARS 2023) (Wollongon, Australia)
2023
Higher studies webinar — Invited speaker
University of Sri Jayewardenepura (USJ), Sri Lanka
2023
Computer Vision System for Automated Medicinal Plant Identification — Invited speaker
NUMBATs meeting, Monash University, Australia
2022
Computer Vision System for Automated Medicinal Plant Identification — Invited speaker
Estadistica 2021, the Annual Statistics Day organized by the Statistics Society of University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Sri Lanka
2021
Computer Vision System for Automated Medicinal Plant Identification — Invited speaker
Vx Tech Talk 2021, Vizuamatix Pvt. Ltd, Sri lanka
2021
Statistical machine learning for medicinal plant leaves classification — Presentation
17th Applied Statistics Conference, Solvenia
2021
Statistical machine learning for medicinal plant leaves classification — Speed-talk
Young Scientists’ Conference on Multidisciplinary Research (YSCMR 2021) which is organised by the Young Scientists’ Association of the National Institute of Fundamental Studies, Sri Lanka (NIFS-YSA)
2021
Visiting
Prof. Heike Hofmann, A/Prof. Susan Vanderplas, and Dr. Michelle Graham
At the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, USA (six weeks)
October-December 2024
A/Prof. Ursula Laa
At the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU University), accompanied by Prof. Di Cook, Prof. Eun-Kyung Lee, and A/Prof. Natalia da Silva (one week)
July 2024
R packages
airpurifyr: Provide an interface to scrape air quality data from
cardinalR: Collection of data structures.
quollr: Tool to visualise how non-linear dimension reduction warps your data
olympics: Provide an interface to scrape Olympic data from
MedLEA: Software which contains information about medicinal plants in Sri Lanka
DSjobtracker: Software which contains what skills and qualifications are required for data science related jobs
Teaching
Tutor
[ETC5510] Introduction to data analysis
2024
[ETC1010] Introduction to data analysis
2024
[ETC3250] Introduction to machine learning
2023 — 2024
[ETC5250] Introduction to machine learning
2023 — 2025
[ETC5521] Exploratory data analysis
2023
[STA 326 2.0] R Programming
2022
[STA 213 2.0] Inferential Statistics
2022
[STA 214 1.0] Nonparametric Statistics
2022
[STA 215 2.0] Sampling techniques
2022
[STA 115 1.0] Elements of Sampling
2022
[STA 113 2.0] Descriptive Statistics
2022
[STA 114 2.0] Probability and Distribution Theory I
2022
[STA 224 2.0] Regression Analysis
2021
[STA 225 2.0] Design of Experiments
2021
[STA 226 1.0] Data Analysis II
2021
[STA 123 2.0] Probability and Distribution Theory II
2021
[STA 124 2.0] Data Analysis I
2021
[STA 125 1.0] Statistical Communication
2021
Awards
PhD external experience fund
Monash University, Australia
2024
Monash Business School Prestigious International Conference Award
Monash University, Australia
2024
Co-Funded Graduate Research Scholarship, Monash Business School
Monash University, Australia
2022 — 2026
Diploma in Computer System Design (DCSD) — Gold medalist
National Institute of Business Management (NIBM), Sri Lanka
2017
OCTAVE competition — Finalists
Research abstract competition organized by OCTAVE company, Sri Lanka
2021
Stat Circle quiz competition — Winners
Team member of the winners at inter university quiz competition organized by the Stat Circle Faculty of Science, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka
2018
Academic Service & Community Engagment
NUMBATs seminar organizer
Monash University, Austria
Semester 1, 2025
UseR! 2024 Session Chair
Conference in Salzburg, Austria
2024
ASC Session Chair
Australian Statistical Conference in Wollongong, Australia
2023
WOMBAT tutorials — Helper
Monash University, Australia
2022
Statistical Consultancy Service — Department representative
University of Sri Jayewardenepura (USJ), Sri Lanka
2020
Professional Memberships
Statistical Society of Australias (SSA)
2022–
R-Ladies Melbourne
2022–
Statistics society
University of Sri Jayewardenepura (USJ), Sri Lanka
2017–2022
References
Prof. Dianne Cook
dicook@monash.edu
https://www.dicook.org/
Professor
Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics
Faculty of Business and Economics
Monash University, Australia
Dr. Thiyanga S. Talagala
ttalagala@sjp.ac.lk
https://thiyanga.netlify.com
Senior Lecturer
Department of Statistics
Faculty of Applied Sciences
University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Sri Lanka