20 Years of Collaborative Work between Western Sydney University

20 years of successful academic, research and cultural cooperation between Western Sydney University and the University of Colombo celebrates, a number of significant achievements. Teaching and Learning; developing an innovative multidisciplinary degree program, which has been embraced widely today. Research; developing several collaborative research projects, some are of national significance and with industry, leading to several successful research grants funded by internal and external, local and international funding bodies. Generating more than forty collaborative publications and 7+ PhD completions. In several staff and student exchanges, participation in organising and conducting collaborative workshops on research methodologies and training are commendable. Leading from this success and experience The New Extended Educational and Cultural Exchange Program invites all disciplines within both institutes for collaborative efforts in teaching and research.

• Collaboratively develop innovative multidisciplinary degree programs including online degrees.
• Collaborative research projects and grants possibly funded by: UOC, WSU, jointly by UOC and WSU, other local funding agencies in Sri Lanka such as NSF, UGC, and other local funding agencies in Australia such as, ARC, NHMRC, AusAid, and finally international funding agencies offered to Sri Lanka such as World Bank, WHO, AHEAD.
• Collaborative research co-supervision of PhD students
• Split and/or Double PhD’s
• Staff and student exchange
• Collaboratively organising conferences and workshops

The MOU was signed between the two institutes on 17^th Feb 1999 for Educational, Scientific and Cultural Cooperation.

• Four academics of University of Colombo (UOC) completed their PhD programme at Western Sydney University (WSU), fully funded by ADB (Asian Development Bank) scholarships.
  • Dr K L Jayaratne – 2006
  • Dr Indra Sahar – 2007
  • Dr H A Caldera – 2007
  • Dr S D Arunathilleka – 2006
• Moderating and second marking of the final year examination of the four year Honours degree in Statistics was done by WSU.
• Moderating and second marking of the Graduate Diploma and MSc in Applied Statistics jointly conducted by UOC and University of Reading UK was done by WSU.
• Collaborative research projects jointly carried out among academics of WSU and UOC through grants.
• Academics of the WSU appointed as PhD co-supervisors and PhD thesis examiners at the UOC.
• Contributed towards establishing the Centre for Data Science in the Faculty of Science through conducting a workshop as part of its inauguration. (2015).
• Currently an academic is reading for a PhD (2018) through a fully funded scholarship from WSU.

• Innovative Multidisciplinary Course Development – First offered in 2005.
  UOC and WSU collaboratively initiated and developed the B. Science (Honours Degree) in Statistics with Computer Science, focussing on Integrating Statistics and Computer Science disciplines. Since its inception 10 positions have been reserved for this honours degree each year, for which the students are absorbed based on the first two years performance. Around 100 graduates have emerged from this programme up to now. There are around 5 PhDs already completed (strongly related to Data Science and Artificial Intelligence) and are serving as academics in the Sri Lankan University system. There are another 8 who are currently following their PhD s, in areas of Data Science, in various parts of the world.
• University of Colombo Collaborative Research Grant – AP/3/2011/CG/04 – (Project with a national significance)
  Title of Research Project: Developing an Economical Strategy for the Future Electricity Generation Procedure in Sri Lanka Duration: from 01/03/2012 to 24/10/2016
  Total Funds Received: Rs. 2,899,500.00 Principal Researcher: Dr.Dilhari Attygalle, Department of Statistics, University of Colombo International Collaborator and Researcher: Dr Liwan Hansen Liyanage, School of Computing Engineering and Mathematics, Western Sydney University.
  The grant-funded project was very successfully completed. Two probationary lecturers obtained their PhDs through this grant. While two faculty members enhanced their research experience through the project, solutions were found for two nationally important issues scientifically. More importantly, each PhD student will be creating a user-friendly real-time decision support system related to their work that can be used by the relevant authorities at the national level. The two academics during their research training also obtained overseas training under the guidance of the collaborator/co-supervisor. Details pertaining to such visits are as below. Office space was provided to the two students for the training where the grant-supported with the finances.
  • OVERSEAS RESEARCH TRAINING
    

    Name of UOC Member	Country	Purpose	Period
    Dr. N.D. Basnayake	Australia	Research training	4-Nov-2017 to 5-Dec- 2017
    Dr. K.A.D. Deshani	Australia	Research training	4-Nov-2017 to 5-Dec- 2017
    Dr. N.D. Basnayake	Australia	Research training	28th September 7th October 2013

    The collaborator was provided with travel grants, to visit Sri Lanka as a resource person to conduct workshops for training of the PhD students and give research direction. Following are details of such workshops.

  • WORKSHOPS CONDUCTED
    

    Visit Number	Dates of workshops (full day)	Venue
    01	30th October 2014	OZO, Colombo
    02	3rd June 2015, 17th June 2015, 24th June 2015	OZO, Colombo
    03	10th December 2015	OZO, Colombo
    04	04th February 2017	Hotel Janaki

    There are thirteen full paper publications among which four are refereed journal publications that have emerged through this project thus far. In the process, many other research ideas have also been generated. Since this project is of national significance there is potential for this research to be extended further to add value to the developed system of this project to create improved actionable versions. The future work can be either in the form of Postdoctoral research and/or more PhD level research. Through this collaboration, the following collaborative research supervision also immerged.

• PhD Co-Supervision
  An academic (Dr. Hasanthi Pathberiya) from the University of Sri Jayewardenepura was cosupervised jointly by Dr. Chandima Tilakeratne and Dr. Liwan Hansen Liyanage (WSU), the title being “Forecasting the EUR/USD Exchange Rate Exploring Impact from News Based on Economic Indicators and Co-integration”. Successfully complete in 2018 The following grants under three areas of the projects have been obtained by Dr. Pathberiay in support of her visit to WSU research training.
  • Forecasting the EUR/USD Exchange Rate Exploring Impact from News Based on Economic Indicators and Co-integration – 2015
    Funding Agency: University Grants Commission
    Funding Approved: Rs 785,500.00
  • Title: A Comparison of Clustering Algorithms in Categorising economic events based on the behaviour of Exchange Rates – 2016
    Funding Agency: National Science Foundation of Sri Lanka
    Funding Approved: Rs 200,000.00
  • Title: Dynamic Environment Based Clustering and Hybrid Forecasting (DEC-HyF) Model: An Application to Forex Market – 2016
    Funding Agency: National Science Foundation of Sri Lanka
    Funding Approved: USD 3791

  Dr. Pathberiya had research training for three months with Dr Liwan Liyanage, from 15^th May – 31^st July 2016, at the WSU from which 4 publications including a journal publication were generated. Further Dr Liyanage gave research direction to Dr Pathberiya in all her UOC visits as her co-supervisor.
  Prof Athula Ginige, has been continuously working with the University Of Colombo School Of Computing (UCSC) as an Examiner and collaborated in the curriculum development of the UCSC on various occasions. Further, he supervised three staff members at UCSC in their PhD projects and several publications were generated as a result of this collaboration.

• Workshop in Any Logic – Feb 2017 (Dr Ante Prodan)
• Centre for Data Science Inauguration and Initiation workshop (offered to 50 industry personnel from Sri Lanka) – 16^th Dec 2015 (Dr Liwan Hansen Liyanage)
• Regional Programme in Planning, Designing and Analysing Data from Health Surveys: Further in collaboration with University of Reading, UK – 2^nd June to 20^th June 1997 (Dr Liwan Hansen Liyanage)

• Dr. K.A.D. Deshani visited WSU for research training from 4-Nov-2017 to 5-Dec- 2017
• Dr N.D. Basnayake visited WSU on the 28^th of September 7^th of October 2013 and from 4-Nov-2017 to 5-Dec- 2017 for research training
• Dr. Hasanthi Pathberiya visited WSU from 15^th May – 31^st July 2016.
• Dr Chandima Tilakaratne is visiting WSU from 29^th June to 1^st July 2017 and from March 2018 to February 2019 on her sabbatical leave
• Dr Liwan Liyanage visited UOC on many occasions-: Attend PhD progress presentations, and PhD research proposal presentations and participate in the review process are a few such activities.

• KAD Deshani, L Liyanage-Hansen, D Attygalle (2019). ‘Artificial Neural Network for Dynamic Iterative Forecasting: Forecasting Hourly Electricity Demand’, American Journal of Applied Mathematics and Statistics 7 (1), 9-17
• Dilini, W.M.N., Attygalle, D., & Hansen, L. L., Nandalal, K.D.W. (2019). ‘Modified 1D Multilevel DWT Segmented ANN Algorithm to Reduce Edge Distortion’, American Journal of Applied Mathematics and Statistics 7, (1), 25-31
• Dilini, W.M.N., Attygalle, D., & Hansen, L. L., Nandalal, K.D.W. (2017). Grid Search based Parameter Tuning of Dynamic Neural Network to Forecast Daily Reservoir Inflow; A Dynamic Neural Network Approach. Proceedings of the International Conference on Computational Modelling & Simulation (ICCMS), Colombo. pp. 291-295.
• Pathberiya H. A., Tilakaratne C. D. And Hansen L. L. (2017). ‘An intelligent decision support system for Forex trading through artificial neural network-integrated with GARCH estimates and Intrinsic Mode Functions’, Proceedings of the IEEE Technically Sponsored Intelligent Systems Conference (IntelliSys) 2017, London. pp 436-445.
• Deshani K.A.D, Attygalle D., Liyanage-Hansen L. and Lakraj G.P., (2017). Dynamic Short Term Load Forecasting using Functional Principal Component Regression, International Conference on Machine Learning and Data Engineering, Sydney, Australia. [ presented on November 2017]
• Basnayake, W.M.N.D., Attygalle, D., & Hansen, L. L., Nandalal, K.D.W. (2017). Wavelet Based Nonlinear Autoregressive Neural Network to Predict Daily Reservoir Inflow. 1st International Conference on Machine Learning and Data Engineering, Sydney, Australia. [ presented on November 2017]
• Basnayake, W.M.N.D., Attygalle, D., & Hansen, L. L., Nandalal, K.D.W. (2017). Cluster Based Modular Nonlinear Autoregressive Neural Network to Predict Daily Reservoir Inflow. 17th International Conference Proceedings on Advances in ICT for Emerging Regions (ICTer) (pp. 134-141). Singapore: Global Science & Technology Forum. Colombo, Sri Lanka.
• Pathberiya H. A., Hansen L. L. and Tilakaratne C. D. (2017) ‘Empirical Mode Decomposition and ANN Based Hybrid Approach to Forecast High Frequency Foreign Exchange Rates’, Proceedings of the International Symposium on Forecasting 2017, Cairns, Australia.
• Pathberiya H. A., Tilakaratne C. D. And Hansen L. L. (2017) ‘Dynamic Environment Based Clustering and Hybrid Modeling for Financial Markets’, Proceedings of SLAYS Open Forum 2017, Colombo. pp. 56.
• Prodan, A., Liyanage, L., Ginige, J. A. (2017). ‘Exploring cannulation process in chemotherapy through a computer simulation. Proceedings of the International Conference on Computational Modeling & Simulation (ICCMS), Colombo. pp. 377-381.
• Deshani K, Attygalle D, Liyanage L, 2016, Incorporating influential factors in diurnal temperature estimation with sparse data, GSTF Journal of Mathematics, Statistics and Operations Research, vol 3, no 2, pp 63-67, [REDI ID: 244378]
• Dilini W, Attygalle D, Liyanage L, Nandalal K, 2016, Ensemble forecast for monthly reservoir inflow: a dynamic neural network approach, International Conference on Operations Research and Statistics, pp 84-90.
• Pathberiya H, Liyanage L, Tilakaratne C, Lokupitiya R, 2016, A comparison of clustering algorithms in categorizing economic events based on the behavior of exchange rates, International Conference on Operations Research and Statistics, pp 14-20.
• Deshani K, Attygalle M, Liyanage L, 2016, Diurnal temperature modelling with sparse data and data integration, International Conference on Operations Research and Statistics, pp 28-32.
• Liyanage L, Pathirage G, 2016, Data integration and big data mining framework to discover impacts of climate change on complex systems, International Conference on Operations Research and Statistics, pp 21-27.
• Chamikara M, Galappaththi A, Yapa R, Nawarathna R, Kodituwakku S, Gunatilake J, Jayathilake A, Liyanage L, 2016, Fuzzy based binary feature profiling for modus operandi analysis, Peer J Computer Science, vol 2.
• Chamikara M, Galappaththi A, Yapa R, Nawarathna R, Kodituwakku S, Gunatilake J, Liyanage L, 2015, [In Print] A crime data analysis framework with geographical information support for intelligence led policing, Peer J Computer Science.
• El Rifai D, Maeder A, Liyanage L, 2015, A content-based-image-retrieval approach for medical image repositories, Australasian Workshop on Health Informatics and Knowledge Management, pp 69-74.
• Deshani K, Attygalle M, Liyanage L, Karunaratne A, 2014, An exploratory analysis on half-hourly electricity load patterns leading to higher performances in neural network predictions, International Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Applications, vol 5, no 3, pp 37-51.
• Deshani K, Liyanage L, Attygalle M, Karunaratne A, 2014, Improved neural network prediction performances of electricity demand: modifying inputs through clustering, International Conference of Data Base and Data Mining (DBDM-2014), pp 137-147.
• Deshani, K.A.D, Hansen, L. L., Attygalle, M.D.T, & Karunarathne, A. (2014). Improved Neural Network Prediction Performances of Electricity Demand: Modifying Inputs through Clustering. Second International Conference on Computational Science and Engineering (pp. 137-147). India: AIRCC
• Pathberiya, H. A., Tilakaratne, C. D. & Hansen, L. L. (2014). ‘Modelling the EUR/USD return volatility on the days of simultaneous releases of economic indicators: Unemployment rate and Non-farm payroll’, Proceedings of the International Forum for Mathematical Modelling 2014, Colombo, Sri Lanka, pp. 98-100
• Deshani K, Liyanage L, Attygalle M, Karunaratne A, 2014, A study of the dynamic behaviour of daily load curve for short term predictions, International Symposium for Next Generation Infrastructure, pp 200-207.
• Dilini W, Liyanage L, Attygalle M, Nandalal K, 2014, Effective water management in the Mahaweli reservoir system: analyzing the inflow of the upmost reservoir, International Symposium for Next Generation Infrastructure, pp 111-119.
• Pathberiya H, Tilakaratne C, Liyanage L, 2014, Modeling the EUR/USD return volatility on the days of simultaneous releases of economic indicators: unemployment rate and non-farm payroll, International Forum for Mathematical Modeling, pp 98-100.
• Pathberiya H. A., Tilakaratne C. D., Hansen L. L. and Lokupitiya R. S. (2014). ‘Modeling EUR/USD return volatility incorporating long run co-movements in exchange rates and US economic indicators’, Proceedings of the International Statistics Conference 2014., Institute of Applied Statistics Sri Lanka, pp. 55.
• Deshani, K.A.D, Hansen, L. L., Attygalle, M.D.T, & Karunarathne, A. (2014). Improved Neural Network Prediction Performances of Electicity Demand: Modifying Inputs through Clustering. Second International Conference on Computational Science and Information Technology. pp. 137-147. India: AIRCC
• Dilini W. M. N., Liyanage L, Attygalle M.D.T., Nandalal, K.D.W., (2013) “Effective Water management in the Mahaweli Reservoir System; Analyzing the inflow of the upmost reservoir”. “, In Proceedings of ISNGI 2013 – International Symposium for Next Generation Infrastructure, Wollongong, Australia, September 2013.
• Pathberiya H. A., Tilakaratne C. D., Hansen L. L. and Lokupitiya R. S. (2013). ‘Model free evaluation of intraday periodicities of exchange rate return volatility’, Proceedings of the 69th Annual Sessions, 2013, Sri Lanka Association for the Advancement of Science, pp. 254
• Arunatileka, S., (2005) Action Research in eBusiness Transformation, CISTM International Conference, MDI, New Delhi, India
• Lawson, R., Arunatileka, S., Ginige, A., Hol, A., (2005) A Pilot Project on eCollaboration in the Australian Toolmaking Industry, BLED, Slovenia Marmaridis, M., Arunatileka, S, Ginige, A., Ginige, A. (2004) Architecture for Evolving and Maintainable Web Information Systems, IRMA (Information Resources Management Association) International conference, New Orleans, USA
• Arunatileka, S, Kapurubandara, M., Ginige, A. (2004) Application of eBusiness Strategies for SMEs in Developing Countries, IEEE International Conference on e-Technology, e-Commerce and e-Service(EEE-04), Taipei, Taiwan
• Jayaratne, L., Ginige, A. and Jiang, Z. (2004), ‘On Image Classification: To Retrieve Images from major Web Sites’, 6th International Information Technology conference, Colombo, Sri Lanka.
• Arunatileka, S, Kapurubandara, M., Ginige, A. (2003) An approach to eTransform SMEs in Developing Countries – A Case Study, IITC, Sri Lanka
• Arunatileka, S. & Ginige, A. (2003) Developing eBusiness Strategies for Competitive Advantage, International Conference on eBusiness (ICEB) Singapore
• Arunatileka, S. & Ginige, A. (2003) Application of the Seven Es in eTransformation to the Manufacturing Sector, International Conference on eChallenges, Bologna, Italy
• Arunatileka, S. & Ginige, A. (2003) Seven Es in eTransformation, IADIS International Conference – e-Society, Lisbon, Portugal
• Arunatileka, S. & Ginige, A. (2002) eTransformation Strategies for the Garment Industry of Sri Lanka, International IT Conference (IITC), Colombo, Sri Lanka
• Pathberiya H. A., Tilakaratne C. D. And Hansen L. L. An improved algorithm to handle noise objects in hierarchical clustering, International Journal of Data Science (Accepted for publication).