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
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.