Nilan Mihindukulasooriya is the Co-Founder of FHTS and Mortar AI. He is currently based in Adelaide, Australia. He was awarded South Australia 40 under 40.  He is also an AI Safety Advocate. He did is undergraduate degree from the University of Colombo School of Computing, Sri Lanka. In this podcast we discuss the ups and downs of an entrepreneur, the mindset and attitude shifts needed to succeed in such a field and what the future holds with the advancements made in AI. Nilan’s LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nilansam?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=android_app 00:00 About Nilan and his company 01:04 From an extrovert to introvert 06:24 Nilan’s journey after University 14:05 Lowest point in life 19:54 comparing Tech bro to Business bro personality 24:11 What makes Australia a good place to start a business? 28:32 Did you experience any discrimination 31:06 Things you didn’t learn from school 37:44 Comparing mindset/attitudes of Australians and Sri Lankans 43:55 Should we be afraid of Artificial Intelligence (AI)? 31:53 Chinese Room thought experiment – AI cannot understand 53:30 The pendulum can swing back 56:11 Why are Sri Lankans always service providers but are behind in creating a product 1:04:35 Closing remarks

Sahitha Karapitiya was selected to present his work at the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) for their Annual International Meeting in 2023. He is the only participant from Sri Lanka. He received his undergraduate degree in Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering from the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Peradeniya. The title of his research is "Simulation of the Temperature Profile of Coffee Beans Roasted Under Far-Infrared Radiation" done under the supervision of Professor K. S. P. Amaratunga (Sanath Amaratunga). If you want to help Sahitha or get in touch with him: Website sahitha.super.site Email: [email protected] Facebook Sahitha Karapitiya Linkedin Sahitha Karapitiya 00:00 About Sahitha 01:24 Sahitha's story 04:07 What were your dreams? 06:48 Entering Faculty of Agriculture at Peradeniya 11:25 What is the potential of Agriculture faculty 15:02 Versatile degree programs 16:22 About Sahitha's research 19:46 Model development 22:26 Experimental Setup 25:15 About ASABE 26:35 Prof. Sanath Amaratunga 28:45 Side business 31:23 Time management 37:41 Plans for the future

Ayodhya Sovis Wickramasooriya is doing her Post Graduuate studies in Agricultural economics at the University of Goettingen, Germany. She is a graduate from the Wayamba University of Sri Lanka and she completed her bachelors in Agriculture Business Management. Agricultural economics is a branch of economics that focuses on the study of agricultural production, consumption, and distribution of goods and services related to agriculture. The field of agricultural economics is concerned with understanding the complex interactions between farmers, consumers, policymakers, and other stakeholders in the agricultural sector. 00:00 About Ayodhya 03:49 Potential of Agriculture 04:27 About International Agriculture 05:55 Economics in Agriculture 13:10 Undergraduate research 16:24 Agriculture in the North 17:55 Banning of chemical fertilizers 20:29 Organic Farming 22:13 Sustainable Agriculture 26:23 New technologies 27:24 Will Sri Lanka continue with agriculture 31:52 Challenges of learning economics 32:53 Future plans

I invited Kethmi Hettige to talk about the Z-score. For those who did A/Ls in Sri Lanka - this is a life deciding equation. Kethmi received her Bachelors in Industrial Statistics and Mathematical Finance from the Faculty of Science, University of Colombo. She is currently doing her PhD in Singapore. 00:00 About Z-score 00:59 Origins of the equation 01:52 Statistical measure 04:30 Mean,SD can be subjective 05:33 Why use it for A/Ls? 06:46 How to calculate it? 10:35 Problem with 2011 A/Ls 11:49 Bell curves 14:03 Biggest assumption with Z-score 16:09 Is it a good method? 20:22 Representative samples 21:35 What determines cutoff marks?

රසායනික බන්ධන විවිධ පරිමාණ වලින් - Computational ව්‍යාපෘතියක් කරමු Let's do a computational chemistry project using OpenMM (39:42) How do chemists understand a chemical bond? Molecular orbital theory helps us understand this. If you haven't watched the previous videos you can check it out here: 1. Quantum Vs Classical mechanics - https://youtu.be/EsRlDKCi2EM 2. What is a chemical bond? https://youtu.be/oERFHqewf_A Many thanks to Dulitha Prasanna for joining the podcast to talk about Quantum Mechanics. 00:00 Mathematics of molecular orbital theory 03:39 Molecular orbital diagrams 05:09 Contribution of each orbitals 06:46 Intro to GAMESS (Practical example) 09:42 Input file (for Nitrogen) 18:30 Visualizing molecular orbitals 22:24 Our understanding of bonding 23:18 Calculations and output file 25:41 Anti-bonding orbitals 27:40 Benzene rings 29:02 Dipeptide hydrolysis 30:51 Computational range/length 33:31 Classical mechanics 36:31 Experiments Vs Simulations 39:06 Course-grained, mesoscale 39:42 OpenMM Python package 45:30 Interaction in solvent box 47:11 Using super computing clusters 49:43 Future projects (Fundraiser)

This is the second video about Quantum Mechanics. We will be talking about chemical bonding - what is the physical understanding of a chemical bond? If you haven't watched the first video you can check it out here: Quantum Vs Classical mechanics - https://youtu.be/EsRlDKCi2EM Many thanks to Dulitha Prasanna for joining the podcast to talk about Quantum Mechanics. Stay tuned for more videos. 00:00 Second video 01:36 Hatree-Fock Theory 03:06 Joint probability 10:10 Wave functions as Gaussian functions 15:56 Different molecular scales 16:31 Explanation of bonding 17:59 Paper: Physical nature of chemical bond 23:00 Molecular orbital theory

Many thanks to Dulitha Prasanna for joining the podcast to talk about Quantum Mechanics. Stay tuned for more videos. 00:00 Our definition of "Quantum" 01:01 Dulitha's story 04:24 Classical Vs Quantum Mechanics 06:31 Newton's Vs Coulomb's law 07:39 Newton's law has its problems 09:29 Problems with Rutherford's theory 13:20 Need of Quantum theory 21:23 Wavefunctions 30:59 Density 37:50 Is electron cloud true? 39:42 Computational Quantum Chemistry 40:45 From one electron to two

Chaturanga Wengappuliarachchi did Biological Sciences for his A/Ls and decided to go to the Open University of Sri Lanka (OUSL).He completed the Bachelor of Science Honours Degree in Physics and conducted research in the following topic: “PVA/(2-Propanol) based bee-honey (core) and povidone-iodine (sheath) coaxial electrospun beads on string nanofibrous scaffold for controlled drug release" at the research labs of OUSL and NIFS (National Institute of Fundamental Studies). He will be starting his PhD at Virginia Tech (USA) in the Physics Department. The purpose of this podcast was to give students the idea that they can re-invent themselves into different fields without sticking to the decisions they made before. You can connect with him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chaturanga-wengappuliarachchi-7563681a1/ 01:28 Hoping to do Medicine 05:22 Curiosity driven 08:56 Deciding on Open University 11:29 Open University Education system 18:03 Mathematics for Biologists 22:12 Biologists think differently 26:36 Undergraduate research 32:27 Nano fibers vs particles 37:32 Research facilities in OUSL 41:53 Favourite Physics areas 47:26 History of Science 51:34 Recommended books and Channels 59:56 Time to read books 1:04:26 Future plans

Many thanks to Indrajith for accepting my invitation again. Here we wanted to talk about the advantages of using LinkedIn to make connections and decide where your next career should be.  00:39 LinkedIn with other social media apps 02:29 Benefits of making connections 09:25 What makes you stand out 11:00 Building trust and accountability 13:48 How to present yourself? 17:06 Content creation on LinkedIn 18:27 Profile picture is necessary 19:57 Header  24:39 Contact information 26:00 Personal branding 27:42 LinkedIn top voices 29:22 Posting in Sinhala or English? 31:23 Personal stories 33:54 Write keywords first 35:22 Experiences and referrels 38:21 Alumni Groups 39:58 Connection requests 48:51 Search your Degree 51:06 Informational Interviews 54:11 Messaging 56:13 Talk about your dreams

Hasitha Eranda is a Theoretical Physicist at UC Irvine, California. He did his bachelors at the Department of Physics in the University of Colombo. He is currently working on searching for relic galaxy candidates in N-body cosmological simulations.  You can find more details about his work from this paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2005.09720.pdf 00:00 About Hasitha 02:01 Final year project in UOC 03:07 PhD thesis - Cosmological simulations 05:07 How to be a Theoretical Physicist? 09:09 Thought experiments 12:30 Astronomy Vs Astro-Physics 15:59 Cosmology 18:19 Problems with Science 19:10 importance of LIGO 19:52 About Black Holes 21:58 Problem with models 25:31 Gravity models 32:03 Problems with model fitting 35:36 Quantum gravity 41:06 Science is political 42:01 Numerical simulations 45:50 Big Bang Vs Inflation theory 53:38 Same data, different theories  

Chalinda Abeykoon is the Managing Partner for nVentures, an early-stage VC fund focusing on fintech startups, licensed under the Monetary Authority of Singapore. He has been working with startups for almost 15 years, mentoring over 3,000 entrepreneurs. Over the years he has helped launch over 50 startups across South & Southeast Asia. He is a recipient of the prestigious Chevening Fellowship from the University of Oxford. Chalinda blogs about the startup world and you can check it here from LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/seed-circle-6883623682577719296/ 00:00 Intro  00:36 Chalinda's story 04:16 About nVentures VC Fund 05:08 What are Fintech companies? 09:26 Startup ecosystems in Sri Lanka 14:52 Startup hubs in Sri Lanka 17:56 What is a startup? 21:52 How do VC funds make money? 24:10 How do know if the startup will fail/succeed? 35:30 Future of Sri Lanka 41:05 Global politics 44:05 Digital Nomad visas 45:15 Advice to the youth  55:32 Improve your writing  

Cris Silva is a dynamic researcher, innovator, and community builder with a passion for biotechnology and bioeconomy. He has completed numerous research projects with leading institutions and is skilled in identifying new opportunities in the field. He is an effective communicator and the founder and executive director of Benzyme Ventures, a thriving community of bio enthusiasts, students, and scientists committed to developing the bioeconomy.  To connect with Cris: Personal LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/cris-silva1996/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cris_silva.insta/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CrisSilva.Biotech/ Blog - https://medium.com/@cris.silva.cymase/  personal website - www.cris-silva.com email - [email protected] Benzyme Ventures Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/BenzymeVentures Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/benzymeventures/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/benzyme/  Blog - https://benzymeventures.medium.com/  website -  www.benzymeventures.org email - [email protected]  BioSummit - https://www.biosummit.org/  GoSH - https://openhardware.science/ 00:00 About Cris 12:27 Working with Ceylon cinnamon 17:44 How do you manage different fields? 22:50 Awarded Leader of Tomorrow for Biotech revolution 25:52 About Benzyme ventures 26:42 Attending Tech meetups 32:25 Trying different things 37:40 What does Benzyme do? 40:40 Communities and Open Source innovation 47:48 Will industries benefit from open source? 51:33 University education is important 53:35 Difference between Biotech Vs Tech entrepreneurs 1:00:48 Technical competency of deep tech 1:03:00 Weaknesses for biotech in Sri Lanka 1:10:10 Can we teach innovation in unviersities? 1:11:17 Strengths in Sri Lanka for biotech

Dr. Shamane Siriwardhana has been part of the Augmented Human Lab and received his PhD from University of Auckland, New Zealand. In this podcast we talk about NLP (Natural Language Processing) and it's applications. He obtained his Bachelors from University of Peradeniya in Electronic and Electrical Engineering. Shamane is currently working as a Senior Machine Learning Engineer at SAILTHRU. AH Lab website: https://ahlab.org/ Some of his work: https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.02627 00:00 Intro 01:48 What is NLP (Natural Language Processing) 03:56 Are languages Mathematical? 10:37 Are all languages the same? 15:18 From Electrical Engineering to Computer Science 17:48 Will AI replace humans? 23:05 Professor Suranga Nanayakkara 27:46 Shamane's Research 39:27 BERT model 01:11:28 Where to get started

Vectors are present is Mathematics, Physics and Computer Science. In  this video I try my best to understand what Dr. Kasun Fernando has to  say - from a purely Mathematics point of view. 01:02 What is a vector? 15:59 Vectors in Physics 22:14 Matrices and Vectors 33:59 Dot product and cross product 43:26 Maxwell's Equations 47:12 Sources and Sinks (Dynamical systems) 49:35 Infinite dimensions 55:25 Axiom of choice

Blockchain is a technology that is revolutionizing many fields. Ashen Bandara is the Co-Founder and CEO at zynergyx Technologies. His company specializes in delivering Blockchain related services. He obtained his Bachelor's degree in Information Technology at Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology (SLIIT) More info about Blockchain can be found here: Slides made by Ashen: https://drive.google.com/file/d/16XIS1WaWErVRhLk05DEZKe5TfOWaa-vk/view?usp=sharing https://linktr.ee/zynergyx Dubai - Blockchain city https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6fadL-0VRw The future of cities - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYXq111H-1o 00:42 No crytocurrency advice 01:11 What is BlockChain? 03:29 Satoshi Nakamoto  05:29 Ethereum BlockChain 09:42 Centralised Vs Distributed database 12:28 Prevent forging of documents 16:43 Easy to hack centralised db 17:24 Startup journey 30:59 Gavel and Toastmasters Clubs 34:25 Applications of BlockChain 37:07 No need of Middle-men 38:55 Dubai "Blockchain City" 40:47 Learning BlockChain 41:51 Common misconceptions 46:06 Skills required 48:31 Risks involved 51:28 Future trends

Indrajith Ekanayake is a Technical Trainer at Codification (based in the UK) and a visiting lecturer at the Open University of Sri Lanka. He obtained his Bachelors from the University of Plymouth in Computer Software Engineering. We wanted to talk about the difference in teaching at an Academic level and Industrial level.  00:00 Intro 02:23 Academia Vs Industry 09:05 University Education Vs Industrial demand  10:13 Importance of languages 20:37 Professionals teaching students 21:55 Khan Academy 24:22 How to teach in a fast changing world? 30:54 Issues with American High Education 32:55 LEAN Method 35:47 Reading books 40:12 Soft skills 42:57 Building a network/connections 46:13 Teaching children 50:54 Asking questions 58:33 Downside of technology 1:02:50 How to get people 'Hooked' 1:05:10 Plans for the future

Dr. Kasun Bandara is an aspiring Computer Scientist and researcher, keen on the disciplines of Data Science, Machine Learning, and time series forecasting. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Colombo School of Computing (UCSC) and worked as a Software Engineer for WSO2, later went to the Monash University in Australia for his PhD.   0:00:00 Intro 0:00:16 What is Computer Science? 0:04:37 Software Developers/Engineers 0:07:36 IT - Information Technology  0:09:41 CSE - Computer Science and Engineering 0:11:19 Current challenges 0:19:28 Kasun's Academic journey 0:27:37 Artificial Intelligence 0:46:12 Neural Network 0:50:13 Linear Vs Non-Linear problems 0:53:46 Activation Function 0:55:52 Importance of Mathematics 0:58:30 Supervised Vs Unsupervised Learning 1:00:07 Backpropagation 1:00:47 Cost function 1:05:09 Black box 1:11:42 Recommended courses 1:22:39 Plans for the future

Today's episode we will talk about the cross-section of biology and computer science. Warren Manuel and Prabath Meemaduma both obtained their Bachelors from the Faculty of Science at the University of Colombo, specializing in Bioinformatics. They are currently pursuing their PhDs in the same field. Warren is at the UTHealth School of Biomedical Informatics (Houston, Texas) and Prabath is at the UMass Lowell Biochemistry Department.  Recommended courses and resources from Prabath: "This was a course I took previously. https://www.edx.org/course/statistics-and-r And the other course I took was archived, it might go online again later: https://courses.edx.org/courses/course-v1:USMx+BIF001x+2T2017_2/c3bfe5ce4b794049b72c99229551bf01/ And this is a really good molecular biology course: https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-to-biology-the-secret-of-life-3 These are some resources which I don't have a personal experience of: 1. https://bioinformatics.ca/workshops/ 2. https://www.bioinformaticscareerguide.com/2018/01/get-bioinformatics-education-online-for.html 3. https://github.com/ossu/bioinformatics If you want already have coding skills and want to practice skills needed bioinformatics this is a good resource to learn with real life applications": https://rosalind.info/problems/locations/ 00:00 Intro 00:42 What is Bioinformatics 02:31 History of Bioinformatics 03:18 Structure of DNA 11:22 Human Genome Project 12:11 Where to learn this?  13:42 Importance during the pandemic 15:17 How the Covid test works 18:15 Contact tracing 19:53 Skills required 21:37 Python Vs R 24:48 Research areas 29:10 Future of Bioinformatics 30:37 Causation Vs Correlation 37:20 Industrial demand

Let's talk about Cyber Security (Information Security) with Shihan Annon. He started small in Sri Lanka from his boss' garage. Under the leadership of Nabhan Akeel they established a partnership with Eguardian from Singapore and expanded globally to other countries. He is an accomplished Technocrat and entrepreneur, playing a key role as Chief Visionary Officer defining and driving global strategy of LIMRA’s IT cluster. 00:58 What made you interested? 04:00 using Linux (IRC) 04:44 Story of your company 06:07 Starting from a garage 07:19 Your boss - Nabhan Akeel 09:04 Milestones 10:04 Importance of Cyber Security 12:43 Mindset of a hacker 15:37 Advice to School students 18:21 Formal education is limited 19:19 Job requirements 20:46 Bug bounty hunting 23:34 Cyber warfare 27:26 Cover your webcams 28:01 Why is my data important 29:31 Scamming people 30:28 Risk is more 31:11 How big is your company? 32:15 Future trends 34:10 Python is useful 34:30 Advice to youth 

I had the privilege of interviewing Dr. Jayeni Hitibandaralage. She specialized in Plant Biotechnology (PBT) at the University of Colombo. She has worked in the industry prior to going for her a PhD at the University of Queensland, Australia. Her PhD was groundbreaking! Titled: PhD for Developing World’s First Meristem Based Commercial Tissue Culture Platform for Avocado. She also has her Bio Tech Lab setup in Sri Lanka and while doing research in Australia, she is running her company in Sri Lanka. I personally found this inspirational because while balancing the role of a parent she was able to accomplish these ventures. I hope this talk gives inspiration to many out there! Please check the timecodes in the discussion section so you get an overview of the topics discussed. Video link: https://youtu.be/aafDYQhoBFU

In this Science Talks episode I wanted to share the Academic Journey of Roshini Randeniya. She is doing her PhD in Neuroscience at the Queensland Brain Institute, University of Queensland, Australia. She is someone who didn’t do any Undergraduate research nor a 4 Year Special Degree. She did her Bachelors at the University of Colombo and then decided to work in the private sector (Sri Lanka Family Planning Institute) for a few years and then decided to pursue a PhD. Her dissertation is on “Neural Pathways of Sensory Learning in Autism Spectrum Disorder”.