As a Bullard Postdoctoral Research Fellow, I collaborate with Dr. Jacek Gwizdka at the Information eXperience (IX) Lab. My research focuses on computational eye-tracking methodology and its applications in human-information interaction and HCI.

• Developed a signal-processing pipeline for measuring cognitive load from pupil diameter fluctuations in real time, validated across N-back and Bloom’s Taxonomy-structured information-search tasks (JEMR 2025, ETRA 2026, CHIIR 2026).
• Examined the effects of working memory capacity and search task complexity on cognitive load during information retrieval, connecting individual cognitive differences to information-seeking behavior (CHIIR 2026, CHIIR 2025).
• Conducting ongoing studies on human-AI interaction, including an LLM-based virtual study examining cognitive load and learning outcomes using Bloom’s Taxonomy assessments.

I completed my Ph.D. in Computer Science at Old Dominion University in 2024, advised by Dr. Sampath Jayarathna. My dissertation introduced a real-time advanced eye movement analysis pipeline for extracting positional gaze and pupillometry measures to quantify cognitive load and visual attention.

• Developed the Real-time Index of Pupillary Activity (RIPA), a computationally efficient system that tracked cognitive load through pupil diameter fluctuations using advanced signal processing techniques.
• Designed and implemented algorithms to classify ambient and focal attentional states from gaze data in real time, enabling dynamic monitoring of user engagement during visual search tasks.
• Built a gaze analytics dashboard for distributed eye tracking, supporting multi-user data collection and visualization in remote settings (IRI 2023, IRI 2024).
• Conducted studies on ADHD prediction using eye gaze metrics and working memory capacity tasks, achieving over 91% classification accuracy with graph convolution networks.
• Served as Course Instructor for CS115: Introduction to Python (Summer 2024).
• Served as Teaching Assistant for CS441/541 (App Development for Smart Devices), CS334 (Computer Architecture), CS450T (Database), and CS250 (Problem Solving & Programming II).

Completed two summer research internships at LANL working on real-time extraction and processing of scholarly PDF documents.

• Built a real-time pipeline to extract structured metadata — including title, abstract, keywords, authors, and affiliations — from scientific PDF documents using natural language processing techniques (Summer 2021).
• Extended the pipeline to support full-text extraction and developed PDFServer, a web application for reviewing, correcting, and managing extracted document metadata at scale (Summer 2022).
• Contributed to improving access to scientific literature by enabling automated ingestion of document metadata into digital library systems.

Served as a Teaching Assistant for CS2963: Presentation Skills in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering.

• Prepared course materials and facilitated sessions on technical communication, academic writing, and professional presentation skills for undergraduate students.
• Conducted lectures, provided individual feedback on presentations, and graded student assignments.

Completed a software engineering internship at UStocktrade, a fintech startup in Sri Lanka.

• Designed and developed a tool to automate API documentation generation by parsing code changes, significantly reducing manual documentation effort for the engineering team.
• Integrated the documentation tool into the existing development workflow, improving consistency and maintainability of API references across the codebase.