Thilanka Munasinghe is a lecturer at Information Technology and Web Science Program at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) with a focus on teaching areas related to Data Science, Data Analytics and Informatics. Prior to joining RPI, Thilanka was the CodeLab instructor at the West Virginia University’s LaunchLab, where he was instrumental in providing technical expertise and mentorship to student entrepreneurs of early-stage student-initiated start-ups. Thilanka has also contributed to large scale open source software projects such as MIT App Inventor. Thilanka received his BSc in Aerospace Engineering and MSc in Mechanical Engineering from West Virginia University, and has conducted research on microgravity systems and genetic algorithms. Thilanka’s current research interests are on data-driven analytics using big data to address societal challenges in a diverse set of areas such as multi-disciplinary engineering applications, energy systems, urbanization, social networks, and health issues that impact society, by building novel Information Systems (IS), Early Warning Systems (EWS) and Internet of Things (IoT) applications by combining geospatial, temporal and socioeconomic data.
Currently I teach the following courses (both graduate level and undergraduate level courses) at RPI: (Please see the teaching section for addition information)
Before joining RPI as a lecturer, I worked at the WVU LaunchLab as the CodeLab instructor where I taught the Android mobile app development class to novice programmers.
I have contributed to MIT App Inventor through Google Summer of Code (GSoC), in integrating Internet of Things through these two projects:
I have publisehd both journal and conference papers based on the research projects that I worked on.
I enjoy teaching. Currently, I teach data-intensive courses such as Data Science, Data Analytics, and Informatics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). Before joining RPI, I had many opportunities to teach at WVU, where I taught Introduction to Engineering courses and Mobile App development courses and tutoring math, physics, and MatLab learning sessions at Engineering Learning Center at WVU. Also, I was the Java, C++, and android programming instructor at WVU Launch Lab.
Click on the images below to learn more about courses that I teach at RPI (Data Science, Data Analytics and Informatics) and see some of the sample lessons I have conducted for Mathematics and Mobile App Development using MIT App Inventor at WVU and other general teaching-related tutorials.
Teaching Data Science, Data Analytics & Informatics courses at RPI and instructing students groups at WVU CodeLabs on hands-on experiance on learning the IoT fundamentals and programming concepts.