Charith Rathnayaka

Dr Charith Rathnayaka is a Senior Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering at the University of the Sunshine Coast (UniSC) and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA). He also serves as an Adjunct Lecturer at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). His research focuses on computational mechanics, sustainable engineering, renewable energy, food drying, and physics-informed machine learning, with a particular emphasis on developing environmentally and economically sustainable processes. Dr Rathnayaka holds a PhD from QUT (2017) and a Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) from the University of Moratuwa (UOM).

• Education:
  • PhD in Computational Mechanics, Queensland University of Technology (2017)
  • BScEng(Hons) in Engineering, University of Moratuwa (First Class Honours)

His research interests include computational modeling of plant cellular drying, green hydrogen systems, and machine learning applications in food science. He teaches thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and heat transfer, integrating research into his teaching. Dr Rathnayaka has received awards such as the QUT Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award and SFHEA recognition.

He leads research grants focusing on renewable energy integration, advanced materials, and aquaculture monitoring. Current projects include small-scale green hydrogen systems for agriculture and machine learning-based food drying prediction. He supervises PhD students in areas like microscale morphological changes during drying.

• Awards:
  • QUT Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award (2017)
  • Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA)
• Professional Memberships:
  • Australasian Fluid Mechanics Society (AFMS)
  • Australasian Association of Engineering Education (AAEE)

Dr Rathnayaka’s work bridges computational modeling and real-world applications, with contributions to peer learning as Co-Editor of the Journal of Peer Learning and Guest Editor for Journal of Visualised Experiments (JoVE).