Dr. Chaminda Hewage is a Reader (Associate Professor) in Data Security in the Cardiff School of Technologies at Cardiff Metropolitan University, UK where he is also the Associate Dean Research for the school. He is the fFounding Director of the Cybersecurity and Information Networks Centre (CINC) at Cardiff Metropolitan University. He received a B.Sc. Engineering (First Class Honours Degree) in Electrical and Information Engineering from the Faculty of Engineering, University of Ruhuna (Sri Lanka) in 2004 and a Ph.D. in Multimedia Communications from the University of Surrey (UK) in 2009. He was awarded the Gold Medal for best performance in Engineering (2014) by the University of Ruhuna for his achievements in undergraduate studies at the General Convocation held in 2004. After graduation, he joined Sri Lanka Telecom PLC (Sri Lanka) as a Telecommunication Engineer (2004). In September 2005, he was awarded the Overseas Research Scholarships (ORS) scholarship by the Higher Education Funding Council of England (Universities UK) to pursue his Ph.D. at the University of Surrey, UK. Upon completion of his PhD, he works as a researcher at the University of Surrey, UK and Kingston University, London, UK. In 2015, he joined Cardiff Metropolitan University, UK as a Senior Lecturer in Networking and Cyber Security. In 2014, he received a Post-Graduate Certification in Higher Education (HE) Teaching and Learning from Kingston University – London. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA), UK. He is a Senior member of the IEEE and Member of IET and the Chartered Institute of Information Security (CIISec).Dr. Lasith Yasakethu is a Senior Lecturer in Department of Applied Electronics, Sri Lanka Technological Campus. He is currently serving as the Dean of Faculty of Technology. Dr. Yasakethu received his BSc. Engineering degree (First Class Hons.) in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, in 2007. He was awarded the prize for best performance in Electronic Communication Engineering by the University of Peradeniya for his achievements in undergraduate studies. After graduation, he joined Dialog Telecom (Pvt.) Ltd., Sri Lanka as a Core-Network Engineer (2007). In October 2007 he was awarded the Overseas Research Scholarships Award by the Higher Education Funding Council of England to pursue PhD at the University of Surrey, UK. After completing his PhD, he worked as a Research Engineer for Technicolor Research & Innovations (formerly known as THOMSON R&D), in Rennes, France (2010-2012). Dr. Yasakethu worked as a Research Fellow and a Senior Research Fellow at University of Surrey, UK and Kingston University, London, UK respectively (2012-2014). Afterwards, he worked as a Senior Lecturer at Department of Mechatronics, Faculty of Engineering, SAITM, Sri Lanka (2014-2016) and Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka (2016-2018). His area of expertise is 3D Video Communication, Perception and Cyber Security. Dr. Yasakethu has worked for several European Commission Framework Program-6 (FP6), and Framework Program-7 (FP7) and Horizon 2020 projects. He is a member of IEEE & an author/reviewer of several IEEE/IET journal/conference publications.Prof. Dushantha Nalin Jayakody, is a Senior Member IEEE, Fellow, IET, and received the Ph. D. degree in Electronics and Communications Engineering, from the University College Dublin, Ireland in 2014. He received his MSc degree in Electronics and Communications Engineering from Eastern Mediterranean University, Turkey. He was ranked as the top 2% scientist in the world in 2021, 2022 and 2023 by the Stanford Elsevier list. In 2021, he received the Sri Lankan Presidential Award for his outstanding research performance among many other awards and recognitions. Since 2022, he is a Professor at the Lusófona University, Portugal. Since 2023, he is also with the Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology, Sri Lanka. From 2019-2022, he served as the Dean, Faculty of Postgraduate Studies & Research at Sri Lanka Technological Campus, Sri Lanka, from 2021-2022 as the Director Postgraduate, Research and Impact at the Research at Sri Lanka Technological Campus, Sri Lanka. He is currently serving as the Vice Chair of IEEE ComSoc (Sri Lanka Chapter). He held visiting and/or sabbatical positions at the Center for Telecommunications Research, University of Sydney, Australia in 2015, and Texas A&M University in 2018, Qatar Foundation (HBKU). He was a visiting professor at the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland both in 2019 and 2022 within the framework of the Academy of Finland. He also served as a visiting professor at the University of Juiz de Fora in Brazil in 2019. From 2019-2022, he has been a SPARC Professor at the Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, National Institute of Tiruchirappalli, India, within the framework of the Ministry of Human Resources in India. From 2014 - 2016, he was a Postdoc Research Fellow at University of Tartu, Estonia and University of Bergen, Norway. From 2016-2021, he was a Professor at the School of Computer Science & Robotics, National Research Tomsk Polytechnic University (TPU) Russia. From 2021-2022, he was with the Department of Engineering & Computer Science/Autonoma TechLab, Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa, Portugal. He has supervised over 8 PhD students and many master and over 50 undergraduate students and 5 Postdoc researchers. In his career, so far, he has attracted nearly 6M $ research funding from many international grant agencies and has published over 230 international peer reviewed journal and conference papers and books. Prof. Jayakody has received the best paper award from the ICCMIT in 2017 and International Conference on Emerging Technologies of Information and Communications (ETIC 2019), March 2019 and IRC 2023. He has received the Sri Lankan President’s Award for Research Excellence in 2020. In July 2019, Prof. Jayakody received the Education Leadership Award from the World Academic Congress in 2019. In 2017 and 2018, he received the outstanding faculty award by National Research Tomsk Polytechnic University, Russia. He also received the Distinguished Researcher in Wireless Communications award in Chennai, India 2019. Prof. Jayakody received the Presidential Award for outstanding research performance in the year 2021. He also received “Best Publication Award” at the Sri Lanka Technological Campus, Sri Lanka in 2019 and 2020.
