Thilanka
Munasinghe
Dr. Thilanka Munasinghe is a Senior Lecturer at the Lally School of Management, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). Dr. Munasinghe holds a Ph.D. in Information Science from the University at Albany (SUNY). He also holds an M.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering and a B.Sc. in Aerospace Engineering from West Virginia University. His background in engineering, data science, machine learning, and information science provides a unique interdisciplinary perspective, bridging engineering and applied science with over a decade of experience uniting projects across diverse domains.
His research lies at the intersection of Classical and Quantum Machine Learning (QML), with a specific focus on human migration dynamics, climate action, and Earth observational data. An award-winning scholar, Dr. Munasinghe has been recognized with the SUNY An award-winning scholar, Dr. Munasinghe has been recognized with the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Student Excellence (CASE) 2025, the highest honor in the entire SUNY system (among all 64 SUNY campuses in New York State), and the Distinguished Dissertation Award (Best PhD Thesis Award) from the University at Albany. His professional experience includes serving as a Lead Research Specialist at RPI’s Institute for Data Exploration & Applications (IDEA) and as a PhD Research Intern at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, where he developed Knowledge Graph frameworks and Quantum Machine Learning (QML) applications using NASA Earth-observation satellite datasets. He has contributed to securing significant research funding, including a $571,336 NASA ROSES grant as a Co-Investigator to develop Digital Twins for wildfire and air quality management. He actively contributes to the academic community as a Program Chair for the AAAI Fall 2025 Symposium on "Quantum Information and Machine Learning (QIML)- Bridging Quantum Computing and Artificial Intelligence", held in Arlington, VA, USA (2025), and as a Workshop Technical Chair for "Quantum Computing - Artificial Intelligence for Industry Applications and Scientific Discoveries," will be held in conjunction with IEEE Quantum Computing and Networks Conference 2026 (QCNC26) in Kobe, Japan. He was the workshop chair for "Big Data Analytics for Humanitarian Crises," held in conjunction with the IEEE BigData2022 Conference in Osaka, Japan.
Currently, his research focus is on developing and exploring Quantum Machine Learning applications and benchmarking using the RPI's 127-qubit IBM Quantum System One at the Future of Computing Institute (FOCI) at RPI Quantum Computer .
As a senior lecturer at the Information Technology and Web Science (ITWS) Area at RPI . Thilanka has been teaching the following courses since 2018 at RPI:
- Data Science (ITWS 6350, CSCI 6350, ERTH 6350)
- Data Analytics (ITWS 6600, MATP 4450)
- Informatics (ITWS 6400, ERTH 6400) also known as the "Xinformatics" course
- Applied Quantum Computing (ITWS 4960, ITWS 6960)
- Machine Learning Open Source & Open Science (MLOS2) (ITWS 4966)
Before joining RPI, he worked at the WVU LaunchLab as the CodeLab instructor.
Some of the News articles related to teaching and research at RPI:
- RPI Faculty Dr. Thilanka Munasinghe Spearhead a Partnership with NASA Scientists to Collaborate with Students in Global Health Challenges
- Chancellor’s Award Winners - Thilanka Munasinghe: “Making Memories: Chancellor’s Award Winners Share Their Favorite UAlbany Moments”
- NASA Earth Data Blog: Lecturer Thilanka Munasinghe knew that access to real-world datasets was critical for maximizing student learning
- Research on Predicting Landslides Is Shared Widely in Scientific Community
- GEO Health Community of Practice: Recommendations to enhance student engagement on projects that integrate Earth observations in public health applications.
- RPI News: Rensselaer Students and Faculty to Develop Web Apps for NASA
- Advancing Dengue Research During a Global Pandemic
- RPI faculty, Dr. Thilanka Munasinghe, collaborates with Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) for his Data Analytics Projects at RPI.
He has contributed to MIT App Inventor by implementing Internet of Things (IoT) App Extension for Android mobile App development through Google Summer of Code (GSoC):