Professor Aruna Seneviratne

Professor Aruna Seneviratne is a Foundation Professor of Telecommunications at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Australia, where he holds the Mahanakorn Chair of Telecommunications.

Over a distinguished career spanning academia and industry, Professor Seneviratne has held academic appointments at leading universities in Australia, the United Kingdom, and France. He has also worked with several prominent industrial research organisations, including Muirhead, Standard Telecommunication Laboratories (STL), Avaya Labs, and Telecom Australia (now Telstra). In addition, he has held visiting appointments at INRIA, France, and has been awarded prestigious research fellowships at British Telecom Research Laboratories and Telecom Australia Research Laboratories.

Professor Seneviratne previously served as Director of the Australian Technology Park Laboratory of NICTA, Australia's Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Centre of Excellence. He also led NICTA's Networked Systems research program, where his team developed technologies to support next-generation digital services, including trust management, energy-efficient content storage, search, and content distribution. Following the merger of NICTA with CSIRO to establish Data61, he was appointed Research Director of the Cyber-Physical Systems Research Program.

His current research focuses on physical analytics—technologies that enable sensing and understanding of the physical world through communication systems and data analytics. More recently, his research has explored the use of Wi-Fi signals for environmental sensing, including the detection of hazards and monitoring of physical environments. His broader research interests span cyber-physical systems, especially use of AI in these systems.

Professor Seneviratne has supervised more than 40 PhD graduates, many of whom have gone on to successful careers in academia and industry. He has made significant contributions to telecommunications and networked systems research through his leadership, innovation, and mentorship.