Ravindra De Silva, I.S.P., ITCP (Mr.)

Location : Toronto

Email: ravindra AT cips DOTca

PROFILE

Senior Software Engineer and IT consultant with 8 years of experience. Recent programming experience with PHP, Java, C++, XML, SQL, Perl and previous experience in MFC, COM, ATL and Visual Basic 6. Core team member and main code contributor to an award winning LAMP FOSS project. Experience in developing web applications, Management Information systems, Portals, Humanitarian applications, frameworks, tools and R & D prototypes. Has led diverse teams as well as handle all stages of the system life cycle individually. Furthermore has co-authored four international publications. Invited speaker at international events.

ICT SKILLS

Languages: PHP, Java, JSP, C++, JavaScript, Perl, MFC, ATL, COM, Visual Basic6, Pascal, Prolog, BASH scripting
Web Technologies: SOAP, REST, AJAX, HTML, XHTML, CSS, XML, XSLT, RSS
E commerce: PayPal and Moneybookers integration
Computer Security: web application security (SQL injection, session hijacking, ect) at application level,PHP INI and apache level , OpenID, web services security, OpenLDAP, Federated Identity
Operating Systems: Installation, administration and day to day use of Debian GNU/Linux. Gentoo Linux, Ubuntu, Mepis, Red Hat, MS Windows 98/XP/NT/ 2000, create and use VMWare images
Server Administration: Apache 2.0, Tomcat, apache mod jk2, AWSTATS, Microsoft IIS, CVS, SVN
Multimedia encoding: FFMPEG PHP extension, FLVTool , DirectShow framework, H.264
RDBMS: MySQL, PostgreSQL ,adodb and PDO, JDBC, Hibernate, MSSQL Server, ADO, ODBC APIs: Google Maps API, Flicker integration, UK Post Code lookup
Messaging: SMS through SMS centers and Kannel, POP, SMTP, vCalendar format, CAPS
Intelligent Systems (AI): develop applications using Fuzzy, Neural Networks, and Genetic algorithms
CASE tools: Eclipse , Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0, JBuilder 6.0, JpadPro,Borland IDEs, Rational rose, Microsoft Visio, Seagate Crystal Reports
Frameworks/Libraries: Spring, Smarty PHP template engine, NuSOAP, PHP mailer, PHP gacl
Scientific/Mathematical: Facial Recognition using eigenFaces, Optical Character Recognition using image processing and neural networks, OpenCV, Matlab, FANN
Miscellaneous: ANT, Openssl, Drupal, Dokuwiki, Dspace, VIM editor, Latex, continuous integration with cruisecontrol, Review Board, Trac, any popular FOSS tool

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Sonic e-Learning Inc, Toronto
June, 2008 to Present
Senior Framework developer (Full time)

• Web framework design & development.
• Application design & development.
• Infrastructure development.
• Research.

Lanka Software Foundation, Colombo, Sri Lanka
August, 2005 to May 2008
Senior Software Engineer (Full time)
http://sahana.lk/ http://www.sahana.lk/about/pmc#ravindra http://www.opensource.lk/
http://www.ohloh.net/projects/1032/contributors

• Designed, developed and led (under the PM) a team (currently 15 in size) to engineer, Sahana the open source web based disaster management system.
• Sahana is the recipient of a Free Software Foundation award, Sourceforge Project of the Month for June 2006, one of the three top finalists in the Health category in Stockholm Challenge, Redhat User Award and won many other awards. Furthermore Network Wold Article 2006 identified Sahana as one of the top 10 Open Source companies to watch for.
• Designed and developed framework components and led the application security & single sign on,biometrics, web services, messaging, and database abstraction efforts.
• Develop and maintain functional modules in addition to framework.
• Overlooked all areas of development and has a thorough idea of the entire code base.
• Pioneered AJAX integration to improve the user experience.
• Identify new areas of development and actively communicate in several mailing lists to keep the community vibrant.
• Provided technical leadership in deployments including New York City Council and Philippines.
• Functioned as the research lead to coordinate and co-author three international publications.
• Gained substantial experience in requirement gathering, communication with diverse and international groups and domain knowledge in humanitarian/health domains.

Communication Policy Research South (CPRsouth)
September, 2006 to Present
IT Consultant/Developer (Contract-Part time)
http://www.cprsouth.org http://www.lirneasia.net/projects/current-projects/capacity-and-field-building/

• Engineered a website and a Digital Repository for researchers.
• CPRsouth is an initiative to develop an Asia-Pacific knowledge network on ICT policy regulation and attracts more than 10,000 hits per month (excluding bots,ect).
• Responsible for setting up a Debian server and administrating Apache, Tomcat, PostgreSQL.
• Performed all of PHP and PERL development, database migration from Microsoft Access to PostgreSQL and 95% of JAVA/JSP development and delivered on time amidst 20% new requirements.

Australian College of Business and Technology, Sri Lanka
August, 2005 to present
Visiting Lecturer
(Contract-Part time)
http://acbt.lk

• Tutored the assigned students of Edith Cowan University, Australia for
(a)Intelligent Systems: Fuzzy systems, Artificial Neural Networks, Evolutionary Algorithms, Hybrids, Artificial Life and Swarm Intelligence. Java programming assignments include fuzzy control program for a bots in a game,controllers for simulations.
(b) Mark up languages: XML, XSLT, XHTML, DTD, and XML Schema with hands on assignments.

Creative Software Solutions, Sri Lanka
April, 2005 to August
Consultant (Contract-Part time)
http://www.cslworld.com/Insidepages/Clients/Clents_Testimonials.htm

• Reverse engineered a C++ Distributed Numerical Control (DNC) application. Intercim, a leader in aerospace manufacturing contracted Creative Software Solutions to rewrite its C++ DNC application in C#. Due to the unavailability of accompanying documentation, reverse engineered the multi threaded C++/MFC application and ramped up the team in Creative Software Solutions.

Dept of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Moratuwa
March, 2005 to August
Lecturer
(Full time)
http://www.cse.mrt.ac.lk/staff.shtml#Visiting_Lecturers http://www.cse.mrt.ac.lk/lecnotes/cs202/
• Lectured, coordinated Data Structures & Algorithms and Object Oriented Programming. Developer and administrator of ”LearnOrg”, the department E-learning and student management system. From august, 2005 to present serve as a visiting lecturer for Data Structures & Algorithms.

British Telecom, UK September
2004 - March, 2005
Trainee Research Engineer (Full time)
http://www.btplc.com/
Under a work permit was based at BT Research & Development Centre, Ipswich, UK in the Video encoding research lab. Researched on DirectShow and developed
• Wrappers for the British Telecom H.264 video encoding/decoding C code as libraries (DLLs).
• Encoder and Decoder Direct Media Objects (DMO) with property pages that use the C libraries.
• Parser filter, a source filter and a writer filter for the encoded data.
• Application to create and play back a filter graph that encodes AVI, YUV file formats using the encoder DMO, while displaying the progress of the encoding.

Citibank N.A., Sri Lanka
2003-2004
Consultant (Part time)
Provided IT consultancy for implementing a suite of application software for credit administration.

Virtusa (pvt) ltd, Sri Lanka
May, 2003 to December
Trainee Software Engineer (Full time industrial training)
http://virtusa.com/
• Researched on Aspect Oriented programming (AOP) and designed a framework to integrate to Virtusa and demonstrated its potential to the management.
• Educated a project team on federated identity and on e-learning (a presales effort).

Galadari Hotel Limited, Sri Lanka
2002
Consultant (Part time)
http://www.galadarihotel.com/
Undertook two software projects involving computerisation of the Engineering department.

DMS Electronics (Pvt) Ltd, Sri Lanka
2000-2003
http://www.dmsgroups.com/index_electronics.htm
Analysed, designed, implemented and maintained a MIS.

Academy Of Business Studies (ABS),Sri Lanka
2004-2005
http://www.absgroup.lk/index.php
Tutored Intelligent Systems and New Trends in Business Information Systems for the assigned students for the Bachelor of Information Technology (BIT) Degree (External) of the University of Colombo.

Science Land Information Technology (Pvt) ltd, Sri Lanka
2003-2004
http://www.scienceland.lk/
Undertook tutoring: Systems Analysis & Design, Software engineering and Data structures & algorithms in Java to assigned students for BIT.

Singapore Informatics (Pvt) Ltd, Sri Lanka
2000-2003
http://www.singaporeinformatics.lk/
Tutored: Pascal & Data Structures for the Diploma in computer studies moderated by NCC (UK).

EDUCATIONAL/PROFESSIONAL QUALIFICATIONS

• World Education Services (WES) credential evaluation and authentication report summary :
"Bachelors degree (four years) in computer science and engineering from, and one and one-half years of undergraduate study in accounting at, a recognized university"
• 2000-2004: University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, BSc Eng (Hons) In Computer Science & Engineering
First Class Honours
Top 1% of 500 Deans list 5/7 semesters
WES equivalent GPA 3.84/4.00
• CIMA -The Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, UK: Advanced Diploma
• 1999-2000: Singapore Informatics (Pvt) Ltd.(SICI), Sri Lanka: Diploma in Computer Studies(NCC-U.K)
Result: Distinction Passed all modules with “A” passes. GPA 4.00/4.00
• 1999: General Certificate of Education (Advanced Level), Sri Lanka.
All subjects Grade A (4A): Applied Mathematics, Pure Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics.
Aggregate: 329 of 400 Country Rank: 32 Physics Country Rank: 2
• 2006: IELTS score of 8.5/9.0

CERTIFICATIONS

• 2008: Sun Certified Programmer for the Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition 6.0 (SCJP)
• 2008: PHP5 Zend Certified Engineer (ZCE)
• 2000: Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) - MCP ID: 2208394

PRESENTATIONS AND WORKSHOPS

• 2007: Presented Sahana at Open Source Health Care Alliance 2007 in Malaysia.
http://www.oshca.org/conference/OSHCA2007/
• 2007: Invited trainer/speaker at the government endorsed Philippine Sahana Initiative in Philippines.
http://bluepoint.com.ph/sahana/
• 2007: Facilitator at Asia Source II in Indonesia organized by International Open Source Network.
http://wiki.asiasource2.iosn.net/index.php/Ravindra_De_Silva
• 2006: was awarded a participant fellowship at 8th Asia Pacific Next Generation Camp, Singapore.
http://www.apng.org/8thcamp/reports/ravindra.htm
• 2006: presented at ”Disaster Management Workshop” in New York, USA organized by IBM.

PUBLICATIONS

• 2007: "Geographical Information Systems in Disaster Management by De Silva,Ravindra et al." , was presented at ISCRAM 2007
http://www.iscram.org/dmdocuments/ISCRAM2007/Proceedings/Pages_211_218_32GISC_08_A_Geographical.pdf
• 2007: "Demonstration of Sahana: Free and Open Source Disaster Management by De Silva,Ravindra et al." , was accepted for the 8th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research.
http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/indices/a-tree/s/Silva:Ravindra_De.html
• 2006: IEEE publication(avaliable in IEEE Xplore): Sahana: Overview of a Disaster Management System by De Silva,Ravindra et al.
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?tp=&arnumber=4250242&isnumber=4250171
• 2006: ”The Universal Biometric System”, was presented at the 6th international information technology conference under the Computational Intelligence category. ISBN: 955-8974-01-3.
http://r4vi.org/index.html/files/Universal%20BioSys-paper.pdf

MENTORING

• Mentored three successfully completed projects for Google Summer of Code, 2007 & 2006.
OCR module: http://code.google.com/soc/2007/lanka/appinfo.html?csaid=7A5ED21DEE2C062D
AJAX library: http://code.google.com/soc/2007/lanka/appinfo.html?csaid=563CBE2CFAE95C6A
Inventory Optimization for Sahana: http://code.google.com/soc/2006/lanka/about.html
• Mentored a successfully completed project (Data Synchronization) for FOSSCode 2006.
• Mentored several projects at undergraduate as well as at post graduate level at University of Moratuwa.
e.g "Multi Dimensional Positioning in Wireless Environments using Bluetooth","A research paper on Aspect oriented software development" for two students at Faculty of IT, University of Moratuwa.

AWARDS

• Selected to the dean’s list five times out of the seven academic semesters in the Bsc (Eng) degree course.
• Received Memorial prizes for second highest in physics at G.C.E (A/L) AND For distinctions in all subjects at both G.C.E (O/L) and (A/L) AND the Applied mathematics prize & science class prize for year 12.

MEMBERSHIPS

• Canadian Information Processing Society (CIPS)
• Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE) of U.K.
• Work Group Chair of Asia Pacific Networking Group (APNG)
• Secretary of Lanka Internet Network Group
• Former Member of the IEEE , U.S.A & IEEE Computer Society of U.S.A.

REFERENCES

Available upon request.