Ashwin De Silva
PhD Candidate at Johns Hopkins University
Clark Hall 317
Baltimore MD 21218
ldesilv2 at jhu dot edu
Hello there! I’m a 5th-year PhD candidate at the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, advised by Prof. Joshua Vogelstein, Prof. Pratik Chaudhari, and Prof. Carey Priebe. My Ph.D. research focuses on learning from non-stationary data, culminating in a mathematical framework called prospective learning. This work connects to ongoing efforts in continual learning and out-of-distribution (OOD) generalization.
I’m passionate about advancing AI through inventing novel models and algorithms with strong guarantees, and about using AI to accelerate progress in science and industry. My research interests include learning theory, computer vision, generative modeling, continual learning, OOD generalization, and reinforcement learning.
I obtained a Master’s degree in Applied Mathematics and Statistics from Johns Hopkins University in 2024. Prior to that, I completed my Bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka in 2020.
Outside work, I love spending time with my wife Malsha, playing the piano, hiking, running, and swimming. I am also an avid history and astronomy enthusiast!
recent news
- Prospective Learning in Retrospect won the student best paper award at AGI 2025! 🏆 — Oct 2025
- Presented a poster at NeuroAI (Seattle) conference held in the Allen Institute — Jul 2025
- Prospective Learning in Retrospect is accepted to AGI 2025 (oral)! 🎉 — Jun 2025
[link] - Simple Calibration via Geodesic Kernels is accepted to TMLR! 🎉 — Jun 2025
[link] - Spending the 2025 summer at Amazon as an applied scientist intern (Foundational AI Research Team)! — May 2025
- Presented a poster at the Johns Hopkins Data Science and AI Institute Spring 2025 Symposium — Apr 2025
- Gave a talk at the Center for Imaging Science (CIS) Retreat at JHU — Dec 2024
- Attended DeepMath 2024 — Nov 2024
- Prospective Learning: Learning for a Dynamic Future was accepted to NeurIPS 2024! 💫 — Aug 2024
[link]
selected publications
- Prospective Learning: Learning for a Dynamic Future
Ashwin De Silva, Rahul Ramesh, Rubing Yang, Siyu Yu, Pratik Chaudhari, Joshua T. Vogelstein
NeurIPS, 2025 [link] - The Value of Out-of-Distribution Data
Ashwin De Silva, Rahul Ramesh, Carey E. Priebe, Pratik Chaudhari, Joshua T. Vogelstein
ICML, 2024 [link] - Simple Calibration via Geodesic Kernels
Jayanta Dey, Haoyin Xu, Ashwin De Silva, Joshua T. Vogelstein
TMLR, 2025 [link] - A Joint Convolutional and Spatial Quad-Directional LSTM Network for Phase Unwrapping
Malsha V. Perera, Ashwin De Silva
ICASSP, 2021 [link] - Real-time Hand Gesture Recognition Using Temporal Muscle Activation Maps of Multi-channel sEMG Signals
Ashwin De Silva, Malsha V. Perera, Kithmin Wickramasinghe, Asma M. Naim, Thilina Dulantha Lalitharatne, Simon L. Kappel
ICASSP, 2020 [link]
selected awards and honors
- Best Student Paper Award — 18th Annual Conference on Artificial General Intelligence (2025)
- Membership in Alpha Eta Mu Beta (AEMB) — National Biomedical Engineering Honor Society, USA (2025)
- Mathematical Institute for Data Science (MINDS) Fellowship — Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD (2024)
- Student Spotlight — Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD (2023)
- Best Short Paper Award — ECCV Workshop on Out-of-Distribution Generalization in Computer Vision (2022)
- Second Runner-Up, IEEE Video and Image Processing (VIP) Cup — IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP) (2021)
- Gold Medal — University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka (2020)
Awarded for the best academic performance in the graduating class of the Department of Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering (BME Stream) - Prof. Pathuwathawithana Memorial Prize — University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka (2020)
Awarded for attaining the highest GPA in the Faculty of Engineering
teaching
- EN.580.697 Biomedical Data Design — Teaching Assistant (Fall 2025)
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD
- EN 1060 Signals and Systems — Junior Lecturer (Fall 2020)
University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka
- EN 3030 Circuits and Systems Design — Junior Lecturer (Spring 2020)
University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka
- BM 2101 Analysis of Physiological Systems — Junior Lecturer (Spring 2020)
University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka