Danula Hettiachchi

Dr. Danula Hettiachchi

Lecturer

Details

Open to

  • Masters Research or PhD student supervision
  • Collaborative projects
  • Media enquiries
  • Industry Projects

About

Dr Hettiachchi is a Lecturer at the School of Computing Technologies, RMIT University and an Associate Investigator at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making & Society (ADM+S), where he was previously a Research Fellow. His key research interests are crowdsourcing, social computing, responsible AI, and human-computer interaction. Dr Hettiachchi researches user interactions with automated decision-making systems and explores how biases manifest, influencing future system decisions and user perceptions. He obtained his PhD from the School of Computing and Information Systems at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and his thesis examined data quality in crowdsourcing.

Dr Hettiachchi has published his research in flagship venues of human-computer interaction (CHI), social computing (CSCW), and crowdsourcing (HCOMP). He has received several grants, including the DAAD AInet Fellowship in Human-Centred AI, an Early Career Research Grant from ADM+S, the Google Travel Scholarship and the Melbourne Research Scholarship. He has over seven years of teaching experience as a lecturer and tutor at three universities in Australia and Sri Lanka. Dr Hettiachchi actively collaborates and engages with the international research community and has served in numerous conference organising and program committees.

Professional interests:
- Associate Investigator at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S).
- Associate Chair at CHI 2022-2024.
- Program Committee member for conferences, including The Web Conference, WSDM, SIGIR, CIKM, and HCOMP.
- Reviewer for esteemed journals, including PACMHCI(CSCW), IMWUT, IP&M, and TOIS.
- Organising Committee member for international conferences, including CHI 2019, HCOMP 2022, and MobileHCI 2024.

Industry experience:
Dr Hettiachchi has worked as a Full-Stack Software Engineer at Sysco Labs, primarily focused on data engineering and analytics. During his PhD, he worked as an Applied Scientist Intern at Amazon (AWS), United States.

Media

Research fields

  • 460803 Collaborative and social computing
  • 460806 Human-computer interaction
  • 460805 Fairness, accountability, transparency, trust and ethics of computer systems

Academic positions

  • Lecturer
  • RMIT University
  • School of Computing Technologies
  • Melbourne, Australia
  • Nov 2023 – Present
  • Research Fellow
  • RMIT University
  • ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S)
  • Melbourne, Australia
  • Mar 2021 – Nov 2023

Non-academic positions

  • Applied Scientist Intern
  • Amazon (United States)
  • Seattle, United States
  • Jun 2020 – Nov 2020
  • Software Engineer
  • Sysco Labs
  • , Sri Lanka
  • Apr 2016 – Feb 2018

Supervisor projects

  • How Users Judge the Credibility of Answers Shown in Community Question Answering Services
  • 26 Apr 2022
  • Quantify and Measure Confirmation Bias in Information Retrieval
  • 9 Mar 2022
  • Systems for Automated Decision-Making
  • 25 Jan 2022

Teaching interests

Dr Hettiachchi has over seven years of experience teaching in the higher education sector. In 2024, he will teach Usability Engineering and Programming Studio.

Research interests

Crowdsourcing, Social Computing, Responsible AI, Human-Computer Interaction
aboriginal flag
torres strait flag

Acknowledgement of Country

RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business - Artwork 'Sentient' by Hollie Johnson, Gunaikurnai and Monero Ngarigo.