The Fourth Sri Lanka Student Workshop on Computer Science (SL-SWCS’17) was successfully conducted on Saturday, 9th of December 2017 in the Auditorium of the Hatton National Bank, Metro Building, Jaffna. The workshop was inaugurated at 9.00am as planned with the presence of the Chief Guest Professor Ratnam Vigneswaran (Vice-Chancellor of University of Jaffna), Special Guest Professor Prince Jeyadevan (Dean, Faculty of Science), Keynote Speakers Dr. Chandana Gamage and Mr. Suren Saverimuthu, Heads of Department of Faculty of Science, academic staff members and students of Department of Computer Science. Dr. K. Thabotharan (General Chair/SL-SWCS’17) presided the workshop and delivered the welcome speech. He then invited the Vice-Chancellor to deliver the Chief Guest’s address. The Vice-Chancellor highly appreciated the work done by the staff of the Department of Computer Science in conducting the workshop for the fourth time and said that it is a timely needed one for the students to showcase their talents. Then the General Chair invited the Dean/Science, to deliver the special address. The Dean indicated that such workshops encourage students to share their research findings with peers and congratulated all the participants and presenters of the workshop.
Once the inauguration of the workshop is over, Dr. S. Mahesan introduced the first Keynote speaker Dr. Chandana Gamage to deliver his speech. Dr. Gamage, nicely guided the participants towards the current research in the AI and Robotics, and it was well received by the participants. The keynote speech was followed by the spotlight session in which each author of poster was given a one-minute time slot to present his/her work. Just after the tea break, Dr. (Mrs.) B. Mayurathan introduced the five selected authors of posters to present their work for about ten minutes. Each presenter was also given a five-minutes time slot for question and answering. With that, the morning session came to an end and the participants were invited for lunch.
After the lunch, Mr. S. Suthakar introduced the second keynote speaker Mr. Gerard S. Saverimuthu to deliver his speech. Mr. Saverimuthu pointed out the recent research activities in AI and its use cases for SA and the importance of Industry academic research collaboration. His keynote speech was well received by the audience. Just after the keynote speech two more selected authors were given ten-minutes time slot each to present their work. At the end of the presentation all the attendees were invited to the hall where the fourteen accepted posters were on display. Attendees have visited all the posters and it was very encouraging to see that the attendees anxiously questioned each and every poster on display. Judges were also seen very busy in evaluating the posters to select one of them as the best poster. The poster session was followed by tea and after the tea break all the attendees gathered together to listen the panel discussion on future trends and directions in Computer Science for research and job placements. The panel discussion was moderated by Dr. E.Y.A. Charles (Programme-Chair/SL-SWCS’17) and Dr. Gamage, Mr. Saverimuthu and Mr. Jegajeevan (Manager/IBM Systems and Technology Group, Sri Lanka) have participated as the panelists. Participants were also given a chance to ask questions and many students were very anxious to clear out all their doubts regarding students’ research, entrepreneurship and future trends in job market. As the last agenda item judges have announced the Best Oral Presentation Award and the Best Poster Award. Mrs. M. Shajini was awarded with the Best Poster Presentation Award and Mr. R.A. Miller was awarded with the Best Poster Award. Both awards also included a cash prize as a sponsor from Professor Saman Halgamuge through University of Melbourne, Australia. Then Dr. Thabotharan delivered the vote of thanks, thanking all the persons who have contributed immensely for successfully conducting the workshop including the event sponsors: 99X Technology, WSO2, and the University of Jaffna. The workshop ended at 5.30 pm.
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