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Pankaja Balasooriya

About

I'm a final-year Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering undergraduate at the University of Moratuwa. I build intelligent systems end to end, from custom electronics and firmware to the control and learning layers that sit on top.

Most of my work lives at the seam between hardware and intelligence. My final year project tackles distributed control for cooperative multi-drone payload transport using multi-agent reinforcement learning. I work on decentralized policy design and sim-to-real transfer. Before that I was a research intern at the Exertion Games Lab, Monash University, building sensing wearables and interactive systems for human-computer interaction research. That work led to publications at several ACM venues.

I've designed circuit boards, written embedded firmware, built autonomous driving stacks, and placed in national robotics competitions. I like problems that don't let me stay in one layer of the stack.

When I'm not building, I'm usually flying a drone somewhere or chasing light for a photograph.

Work experience

  1. Monash University

    Human–Computer Interaction Research Intern

    Exertion Games Lab · Clayton, VIC, Australia

    Dec 2025 — Jun 2026

    7 mos

    • Designed embedded systems around STM32 and custom PCBs, and developed the firmware and full-stack software around them.
    • Conducted user studies and co-authored papers for ACM UIST and ACM DIS 2026.

  2. University of Moratuwa

    Undergraduate Teaching Assistant — EN2533 Robot Design and Competition

    Moratuwa, Sri Lanka

    May 2025 — Nov 2025

    7 mos

    • Designed competition tasks and mentored student teams.
    • Ran lab sessions and graded coursework.

  3. Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation Limited

    Software Development Intern

    Colombo, Sri Lanka

    Aug 2022 — Oct 2022

    3 mos

    • Enterprise web development and database management.
    • Software testing across internal systems.

Education

Higher education

  1. University of Moratuwa

    BSc Eng (Hons) in Electronic & Telecommunication Engineering

    Moratuwa, Sri Lanka

    Feb 2023 — Present

    3 yrs 9 mos

    • CGPA: 3.73 / 4.00
    • Key courses: Robotics, Computer Vision, Electronic Control Systems Design, Circuits and Systems Design, Linear Algebra, Signals and Systems

  2. ESOFT Metro Campus

    Pearson Assured Diplomas in Software Engineering and Information Technology

    Gampaha, Sri Lanka

    Dec 2018 — Oct 2019

    11 mos

    • Diploma in Software Engineering (Dec 2018 – Oct 2019): OOP, databases, software engineering principles
    • Diploma in Information Technology (Dec 2018 – Aug 2019): batch top grade honours

School

  1. Bandaranayake College

    G.C.E. Advanced & Ordinary Level

    Gampaha, Sri Lanka

    May 2014 — Sep 2022

    8 yrs 5 mos

    • Advanced Level, Physical Sciences (May 2019 – Sep 2022): Z-score 2.5230 — Combined Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry
    • Ordinary Level (May 2014 – Dec 2018): 9 A grades — Mathematics, Science, English Literature, Business Studies, ICT

Everything on one page, print-ready Download CV (PDF)

Get in touch

Email is the best way to reach me. I am also on the networks below.

pankajabalasooriya566@gmail.com