Blog – Department of Statistics

27Oct

News

Timetable Semester II – 2025

19Sep

News

3rd International Conference on Data Science & Artificial Intelligence (DSAI 2025)

The Department of Statistics, University of Sri Jayewardenepura (USJ), Sri Lanka, together with the Postgraduate Institute of Science, University of Peradeniya (PGIS), Sri Lanka, are proud to jointly organize the 3rd International Conference on Data Science & Artificial Intelligence (DSAI 2025).

Dates: 19th – 21st November, 2025
Venue: Joint Research and Demonstration Centre, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka

This prestigious global conference brings together researchers, academics, and practitioners to share cutting-edge research and applications in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, with a strong focus on supporting growth and innovation in developing countries. Participants will have the opportunity to engage in knowledge sharing, collaboration, and networking with leading experts and emerging innovators in the field.

Tracks of Interest (include, but not limited to):

Affective computing, Applications of DS & AI, Bayesian networks, Constraint satisfaction, Evolutionary computation, Data mining and knowledge discovery, DS & AI in education systems, Explainable, trustable, and moral AI, Foundation of DS & AI, Image analysis, Information retrieval and extraction, Intelligent agents. Knowledge acquisition and ontology, Knowledge representation, Markov networks, Natural language processing, Neural networks and deep learning, Planning and scheduling, Probabilistic inference, Reasoning and argumentation, Semantic web, Uncertainty, Vision and perception.

Important Dates:

Call for Papers: January 15, 2025
Deadline for Paper Submission: June 29, 2025 (Extended)
Notification of Acceptance: August 26, 2025
Camera-ready Submission: September 6, 2025
Early-Bird Registration: September 1^st – 15^th, 2025
Regular Registration: November 1, 2025
Conference Dates: November 19^th– 21^st, 2025

We warmly invite the academic community, industry professionals, and students to participate in this transformative event.

For further details and submission guidelines, please visit the official conference website: https://icdsai.pdn.ac.lk/

11Sep

Activities

Exploring Practical Statistics : A visit to a Rice Research Centre

The Department of Statistics of University of Sri Jayewardenepura organized an enriching educational field visit to the Regional Rice Research & Development Centre (RRDC) in Bombuwala. This immersive experience highlighted the department’s dedication to delivering practical education that strengthens students’ understanding of statistical principles in authentic environments.

The purpose of this visit was to illustrate how experimental designs are used in real-world scenarios, supplementing the curriculum in STA 3172/ASP 4522 Advanced Design of Experiments. The trip took place on August 12, 2024, with the help of Dr. Pradeepa De Silva, Additional Director and Principal Agriculture Scientist (Rice Breeding), who thoughtfully planned the program from the very beginning. Mrs. Deepika Weerasinghe, the Deputy Director (Research), was an instrumental figure in coordinating the activities on-site, making sure that everything went smoothly. Dr. Wasana Wijesuriya, a retired Principal Research Officer at the Rubber Research Institute of Sri Lanka, was the key figure that helped the department make the first connection with the institute. She was the first point of contact and played a key role in building the collaboration.

Both Dr. Manjula Withnawasam and Dr. Geethika Rupasinghe, Assistant Directors of Agriculture (Research), took responsibility for leading the sessions. This visit became an amazing learning experience for the third-year undergraduates who took part, as it clearly showed how different experimental designs are utilized in real life. Some of the designs that were witnessed by the students included a Completely Randomized Design (CRD), a Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD), a Split-Plot Design, and even an Augmented RCBD. These ideas went beyond what was taught in the standard lectures and offered fresh insights. As the students saw these designs being used in rice cultivation trials, the abstract ideas and methods they learned in class were converted into real, practical things in the field.

The facilitators encouraged active engagement through intriguing discussions on experiment layout, treatment allocation, and block management, elevating the experience far beyond passive viewing. Thanks to this enriching experience, engaging discussions and questions arose among the students, and the answers to said questions resulted in a deeper understanding of experimental designs that highlighted the broad applications of statistics in agriculture and beyond. With these practical insights, students can now approach their academic work with a more applied perspective.

18Jan

Activities, Collaboration, News

Concluding Remarks of the International Statistics Conference 2024

Concluding Remarks of the International Statistics Conference 2024 (ISC 2024)

The 4^th triennial International Statistics Conference organized by the Institute of Applied Statistics Sri Lanka (IASSL), International Statistics Conference 2024 (ISC 2024), was held 28 – 29 December 2024 at Cinnamon Lakeside, Colombo. Department of Statistics, Faculty of Applied Sciences, University of Sri Jayewardenepura (USJ) was the local collaborator of the conference while Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, Simon Fraser University (SFU), Canada was its international collaborator.

The theme of ISC 2024 was “Unleashing the power of data: Harnessing the Synergy between Statistics and Data Science”. The main objective of the event was to bring together data scientists/statisticians from across the world and provide a platform for them to share their latest research findings on theory and applications of data science/statistics with Sri Lankan data scientists/statisticians. Further, the event also facilitated an immense opportunity for Sri Lankan undergraduates/postgraduates/academics/data Scientists/statisticians to develop collaborations with world renowned researchers/academics/data scientists/statisticians.

As the local collaborator, staff and BSc (honours in Statistics) students took the leading role in organizing and contributed immensely to the event during the past one and a half years. The two-day conference was packed with various academic and industry sessions relevant to the theme. This included six invited talk sessions, seven invited group sessions, two industry talks, two industry invited group sessions and sixteen contributory sessions. Around fifty invited/contributory foreign speakers from different parts of the world were present. In total, each day around 200 attendees were present. The event was a huge success and received excellent feedback from all international and local delegates, invited speakers and participants of ISC 2024. The conference also conducted two competitions: ISC 2024 Case Study Poster Competition and IASSL National Poster Competition. Both competitions were well received by Sri Lankan school children and undergraduates.

The pre-conference workshop of ISC 2024 was also held on the 27^th December, 2024 at the BLC, Faculty of Applied Sciences, University of Sri Jayewardenepura. The theme of the conference was “Sports Analytics” and the resource persons consisted of a team from Simon Fraser University, Canada led by Prof. Tim Swartz, a world-renowned sports analytics researcher. Around fifty local/international participants were present for this one-day workshop. I would like to thank the Dean’s office staff and the coordinator and the technical officers of the BLC for assisting us with the arrangements.