Biography

Madhusanka Liyanage is an Associate Professor/Ad Astra Fellow and Director of Graduate Research at the School of Computer Science, University College Dublin, Ireland. He is also a Docent/Adjunct Professor at the Center for Wireless Communications, University of Oulu, Finland, an Honorary Adjunct Professor of Network Security at the Department of Electrical and Information Engineering, University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka and The Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Sri Jarawardhenepura, Sri Lanka. He received his B.Sc. degree (First Class Honours) in electronics and telecommunication engineering from the University of Moratuwa, Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, in 2009, the M.Eng. degree from the Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok, Thailand, in 2011, the M.Sc. degree from the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, Nice, France, in 2011, and the Doctor of Technology degree in communication engineering from the University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland, in 2016. From 2011 to 2012, he worked as a Research Scientist at the I3S Laboratory and Inria, Sophia Antipolis, France. He also received the prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Individual Fellowship and the Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship during 2018-2020. From 2015 to 2018, he was a Visiting Research Fellow at the CSIRO, Australia, the Infolabs21, Lancaster University, U.K.; Computer Science and Engineering, The University of New South Wales, Australia; School of I.T., University of Sydney, Australia, LIP6, Sorbonne University, France and Computer Science and Engineering, The University of Oxford, U.K. He is also a senior member of IEEE. In 2020, he received the "2020 IEEE ComSoc Outstanding Young Researcher" award by IEEE ComSoc EMEA. In 2021, 2022 and 2023, he was ranked among the world's top 2% of scientists (2020, 2021, 2022 & 2023) on the list prepared by Elsevier BV, Stanford University, USA. Also, he was awarded an Irish Research Council (IRC) Research Ally Prize as part of the IRC Researcher of the Year 2021 and 2023 awards for his positive impact as a supervisor. In 2022, he received "the 2022 Tom Brazil Excellence in Research Award" from the SFI CONNECT Center. Moreover, Madhusanka received a special commendation from the Irish Research Council Ireland for being the IRC Early Career Researcher of 2022.

He has co-authored over 300+ publications, including three authored books, four edited books with Wiley, and two patents (Google Citations: 15000+, h-index: 55+). Moreover, He has received four Best Paper Awards for SDMN security (at NGMAST 2015), 5G Security (at IEEE CSCN 2017), MEC Security (IEEE MCE 2021) and 5G IoT (ICT Express 2022). Additionally, he has been awarded two research grants and 19 other prestigious awards/scholarships during his research career. Liyanage has worked for more than fifteen E.U., international and national projects in the ICT domain. Moreover, he was the Finnish national coordinator for EU COST Action CA15127 on resilient communication services. He serves as a management committee member for three other EU COST action projects: EU COST Action IC1301, IC1303, CA15107, CA16226, CA2011, and CA20136. Liyanage has over six years of experience in research project management, research group leadership, proposal preparation, project progress documentation, and graduate student co-supervision/mentoring. He has secured over 5 Million euros in research funding via various research projects. He is a P.I. for three large EU H2020/Horizon Europe projects. As a leader of work packages in several projects, he held responsibilities, including SIGMONA and Naked approach projects. In 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2021, he won the Best Researcher Award at the Centre for Wireless Communications, the University of Oulu, and the School of Computer Science in 2020 for his excellent contribution to project management and research activities. Additionally, two research projects (MEVICO and SIGMONA projects) received the CELTIC Excellence and CELTIC Innovation Awards in 2013, 2017, and 2018.

He is also an expert consultant at the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA). In 2021, Liyanage was elevated as a Funded Investigator of the Science Foundation Ireland CONNECT Research Centre, Ireland. Moreover, he is an expert reviewer at different funding agencies in France, Qatar, UAE, Sri Lanka, and Kazakhstan. In addition, Madhusanka has been nominated as a Named Supervisor of the SFI Centre for Research Training in Machine Learning to supervise the doctoral students at the centre. In addition, Madhusanka is a member of the Graduate School Board (GSB), College Graduate Research Forum, and Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion (EDI) Committee at UCD.