Laknath Ashwin De Silva

Hello there! My name is Laknath Ashwin De Silva (ලක්නාත් අශ්වි​න් ද සිල්වා in Sinhalese script). I am a third-year PhD candidate in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, where I am fortunate to be advised by Dr. Joshua Vogelstein, Dr. Pratik Chaudhari (UPenn) and Dr. Carey E. Priebe.

I broadly work on {machine, deep} learning, with an aspiration to strive towards reducing the gap between artificial and natural intelligences. My doctoral research is currently focused on learning under non-stationary distributions, out-of-distribution (OOD) generalization, and robustness to distribution shifts, with applications in large language models (esp. bias, fairness, and responsibility), computer vision, and biomedical data science.

I received my Bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka in 2020 ( ranked 1st among ~950 undergrads in the Faculty of Engineering). I completed my thesis on “Designing a Cost-Effective Dry Contact sEMG Sensor System for Controlling a Bionic Hand” with Dr. Simon Kappel and Dr. Thilina Lalitharatne. As an undergrad, I interned at The Florey Institute (University of Melbourne) and Center for Advanced Imaging (University of Queensland), where I had the pleasure of working with Dr. Steve Petrou, Dr. Saman Halgamuge, and Dr. Steffen Bollmann.

Outside work, I love spending time with my wife Malsha, playing the piano, hiking, and trying out new recipes. I am an avid fan of astronomy, history, science-fiction, anime, and Formula 1!