Dr. A. D. (Andy) Gunawardena has served as a Computer Science professor in multiple capacities in number of academic institutions including Carnegie Mellon University.
Princeton University and Rutgers University. He joined as a faculty member in the department of Computer Science at Princeton University in 2013. He also served as an Associate Teaching Professor of Computer Science
at Carnegie Mellon University from 1998-2013 and is now a courtesy faculty at CMU. He is a long time advocate of AI and technology in education and the application of the principles of learning sciences to learning.
He is the co-author of three college textbooks in computational linear algebra published by Springer-Verlag and Thompson Brooks-Cole and is the author and co-author of over 50 research articles. His textbooks have been
translated into other languages. He co-founded TextCentric, Inc in 2003, the first technologies to streamline publishing process using a proprietary technology called Adaptive Content Management System.
The technology was sold to Pearson publishing in 2008 and played a founding role in bringing Pearson technology operations to Sri Lanka. He is also the co-founder of Classroom Salon, a platform to increase student
engagement through annotations and analytics. Classroom Salon was acquired by Global TII in 2022. He has received over US$ 3 million in funding from NSF, Qatar Foundation, Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, Google and many
other foundations. His many honors include: leadership in technology award from HP, service award from Jesse Jones institute, ACM appreciation award from ACM Houston chapter, and
Exceptional achievement award (highest honor given to Sri Lankan expatriate) from Sri Lanka foundation. He was also a founding fellow of HP Catalyst Institute in 2010. From 2010-2013, he co-led the HP's measuring learning
consortium, a multi-million dollar effort to introduce data driven learning. He is the principle inventor of US Patent 10,061,756 sponsored by Carnegie Mellon University and is the principle inventor of Princeton University
based patents machine assisted segmentation of video collections(US Patents # 10810436 #11126858 ). He is a co-founder of CUbits.ai a Princeton University based startup aiming to provide indexing and search capabilities
for large video collections. The company was founded with multiple innovation grants from Princeton innovation fund. He is also the lead for CodeBench (http://codebench.us) a platform designed to scale AI and
Data Science Education. He received Grossman Innovation award in 2024. He is currently the stream editor for learning analytics at the International Journal of innovation in online education.
He typically teaches courses in data science, computer algorithms, discrete structures, systems programming, and pen-based computing. His research interests include in AI in education/training and
Human Computer Interaction for building human-centric intefaces.