The Faculty of Engineering, University of Ruhuna, proudly announces that two undergraduate projects from the Department of Electrical and Information Engineering (DEIE) have secured the 1st and 2nd places at the Undergraduate Inventor of the Year (UIY) 2026, organized by The Institution of Engineers, Sri Lanka (IESL).
1st Place: iHeart – Multi-modal Cardiac Monitor for Emerging AI Health Applications
iHeart is a portable, AI-driven cardiac monitoring system that integrates five sensing technologies: ECG, PCG, SCG, PPG, and Continuous-Wave Doppler Ultrasound. It combines custom-designed embedded hardware, digital signal processing, and multi-modal sensor fusion to capture the heart’s electrical, mechanical, acoustic, and vascular activity. With AI-based anomaly detection, iHeart aims to make cardiac monitoring more comprehensive, accessible, and intelligent.
Student Team: Suntharalingam Sivanujan, Saminda Attanayake, Kasunie Senevirathne, Thivanka Wimalachandra
Supervisors: Prof. Arjuna Madanayake and Dr. Chatura Wickrema Seneviratne
This win adds to the team’s national recognitions in 2026:
- 1st Place, IEEE FYP Arena 2026, Biomedical Engineering & Emerging Technologies Track
- 2nd Place, National AI Awards 2026, University AI Innovation Award (Innovation & Future Focus Category)
2nd Place: Thoraxis – Interpretable Abnormality Classification in Volumetric Chest CT Using Dictionary Learning
In high-stakes fields like medicine, interpretability matters as much as accuracy. Unlike deep learning models that work as black boxes, Thoraxis uses Dictionary Learning and Sparse Representation to connect predictions to specific regions and underlying structures within volumetric chest CT scans, giving biomedical researchers a clearer view of what influenced a decision. The project delivers a Python library for Sparse Representation-based Machine Learning algorithms with 23,000+ downloads, an explainable Dictionary Learning framework for chest CT interpretation, a unified evaluation framework for chest CT models, and a public leaderboard of existing models deployed as a Hugging Face benchmark for transparent comparison of model performance.
Student Team: Chamuditha Kekulawala, Govindu Thejana, Pasan Thrilakshana, Yasiru Kularathna
Supervisors: Dr. Kaveen Liyanage and Ms. Sithara Madhubhashini
This win adds to the team’s national recognitions in 2026:
- 1st Place, IEEE Final Year Project (FYP) Arena, AI & Data Science Track
The Faculty congratulates both teams and their supervisors on these accomplishments, and thanks IESL for providing a valuable national platform to recognise undergraduate engineering innovation.
