معرفی
Nisansala Yatapanage is a Senior Lecturer at the Australian National University (ANU) since January 2025, and served as a Lecturer from 2022 to 2024. She holds the position of Interim Associate Director of Engagement and Impact in the School of Computing within the ANU College of Systems & Society. Prior to ANU, she was a Senior Lecturer/Lecturer at De Montfort University, Leicester, U.K. (2017-2019), and worked with Prof. Cliff Jones at Newcastle University, U.K. (2013-2017) on the "Taming Concurrency" project.
Her educational background includes a PhD from Griffith University (2012), supervised by Dr. Kirsten Winter. Before her PhD, she was a researcher in the ARC Centre for Complex Systems and Griffith University (2004-2007), working on specification and verification for safety-critical systems using Behavior Tree language and model checking.
Nisansala's research focuses on the application of formal methods for various applications, particularly in concurrency, safety-critical systems, and security. She is currently investigating concurrency verification using rely/guarantee, separation logics, and temporal logic. Her work also explores the verification of security protocols and the foundations of concurrency, with recent research examining the links between rely/guarantee reasoning and linearisability for non-blocking algorithms. She has developed techniques for reducing Behavior Tree models prior to model checking and created a novel form of branching bisimulation called "Next-preserving Branching Bisimulation."
Her publications demonstrate a consistent focus on formal verification methods, with particular emphasis on concurrency and safety-critical systems. Over the years, her work has evolved from Behavior Tree specifications and model checking to more advanced techniques involving rely/guarantee reasoning and separation logic. Recent publications show increasing focus on security protocols and the theoretical foundations of concurrent systems.
- Fellow of AdvanceHE
- Commended in Australian Photographer of the Year Competition 2020 (Travel category)
Nisansala has extensive teaching experience across multiple institutions. At ANU, she has served as Course Convenor for multiple courses including COMP4011/8011 Special Topics in Formal Methods and Programming Languages, COMP1600 Foundations of Computing, and COMP1100/1130 Programming as Problem Solving. Previously at De Montfort University, she was Deputy Programme Leader of the BSc Computer Science & BSc Software Engineering degrees and Course Convenor for Data Structures & Algorithms and Concurrent & Parallel Algorithms. She has also taught at the ANU Logic Summer School.
She has been involved in several significant research projects including "Taming Concurrency" at Newcastle University (2013-2017), a Model-Based Safety Analysis of Air Traffic Control Operational Procedures at UQ (2011-2012), and her PhD project on Slicing Behavior Trees for Verification of Large Systems at Griffith University (2007-2011).
