Hi! My name is Rukmal Weerawarana. I am the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Ren, an emerging company operating at the cutting-edge of Artificial Intelligence research and development. Our mission is to build the perfect tools for the Human mind.
I love working on hard problems, and building Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning systems.
I am extremely passionate about AI research, the advent of consumer-grade BCIs, and the increasing level of interconnectedness on the planet; I can’t wait to see how it will change society in the decades to come.
CHANGE: Currently, I’m a Strategy and Technology Consultant at the Avinya Foundation, a nonprofit organization that is creating and delivering programs to empower a generation of students left behind by the system in Sri Lanka. I am working with the CTO to define the core technology platform enabling our mission of scaling to 320 schools across Sri Lanka. I also interface with the rest of the Leadership Team to guide the overall strategy of the foundation. In addition, I am an external Research Collaborator at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where I conduct research on applied AI for bioinformatics with Prof. Oshani Seneviratne.
CHANGE: Before that, I was a Data Science Software Engineer at ExtraHop Networks. There, I designed and developed high-throughput data pipelines and applied machine learning algorithms to detect unusual network behavior at the petabyte scale. I left ExtraHop Networks 6 months after it was acquired by Bain Capital for almost $1 Billion.
In the past, I have worked on developing signal processing software for neuroprosthetics, designing improved heuristics for indexing markets, computing trust in biomedical publications by ranking citation graphs, and building a Hyperloop.
I have a BBA in Finance from the Foster School of Business at the University of Washington, and a MS in Financial Engineering from the Stevens Institute of Technology.
I was born in West Lafayette, IN, but I spent my childhood and teenage years in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Since then, I have lived in Seattle, New York City, San Jose, Sacramento, and Miami.
I live in Colombo with my girlfriend, Gina.