Arjuna Madanayake
I have always been a tinkerer. More than likely this is because my dad was heavily into electronics and computers and I absolutely worshipped him as a child. I started playing with computers on a Sinclair ZX Spectrum+ - a gift for the nine year old me back in 1984. I wrote my first program on the Spectrum+, and have since developed a love for electronics and computer science that has carried me forward to this day. Today, I am a tenured professor at Florida International University - or simply “FIU” to pretty much everyone in Miami - where I lead a bunch of graduate students towards their PhDs in electronics. I learned electronics mostly by tinkering but decided to get a Bachelors in the subject from the University of Moratuwa, in my mother country of Sri Lanka. One thing led to another after my stint at the Department of Electronics and Telecommunications at the University of Moratuwa, and finally I ended up with a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Calgary in Canada.
Today, I am focused on wireless communications and signal processing research with emphasis on electronic hardware systems, mainly chip design. This includes various types of integrated circuit technologies for defense, communications, and AI. I was part time Engineering Lead at Lemurian Labs (first team member after the two founders), where I led the company in designing an AI accelerator chip using a secret sauce computer arithmetic scheme. Chalinda and I have been friends since we were about 7 years old! A very long time. I have joined the team at Healthy to lead the technology side, including all systems and computing algorithms that go into the back-end of Healthy. This includes various types of AI algorithms as well as compute platforms, digital systems and software architectures from a systems standpoint.
I am motivated by our Mission at Healthy due to its human centric nature - a departure from my daily research at the University where we deal with machines and various systems with little or no human aspects to our work. Healthy allows me to explore a creative side which is not relevant in my daily work dealing with telecommunications and circuits topics for the commercial wireless and defense industries that are technology driven and not so much human driven. With more water under the bridge, I have learned to value the human element of life, and the importance of the well being of human beings and animals that go beyond mindless pursuit of technology. I am a proponent of society-first tech development, and want to do my part to make the tech industry put people first.
