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About Akila
Akila de Silva is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at San Francisco State University. He earned his PhD in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he was advised by Professor Alex Pang and co-advised by Professor James Davis. Prior to this, he obtained an MS degree in Computer Science from Columbia University. Previously, he served as a graduate student researcher at the UCSC VIS Lab from September 2018 to December 2023. His areas of expertise encompass Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Computer Vision, Visualization, and Applied AI. De Silva maintains an active research profile focused on machine learning applications for rip current detection, coastal observation systems, citizen science platforms, and ethical generative AI in undergraduate computer science education.
De Silva has authored and co-authored numerous publications in prestigious venues. Key works include "RipViz: Finding Rip Currents by Learning Pathline Behavior" published in IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (2023), "How Much Does Input Data Type Impact Final FaceModel Accuracy?" presented at IEEE Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) (2022), "Flow-based Rip Current Detection and Visualization" in IEEE Access (2022), and "Automated rip current detection with region based convolutional neural networks" in Coastal Engineering (2021). Recent contributions feature "RipScout: Realtime ML-Assisted Rip Current Detection and Automated Data Collection using UAVs" in IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing (2025), "SmartCS: Enabling the creation of ML-Powered Computer Vision Mobile Apps for Citizen Science Applications without Coding" in Citizen Science: Theory and Practice (2024), and "STEM Faculty Perspectives on Generative AI in Higher Education" at the AAAI Spring Symposium (2026). He received the Michael Richman Award for 2024-25 alongside Professors Leigh Jin and Weimin Zhang for "Rebuild the Social Fabrics of San Francisco with Vision Pro." De Silva serves as Co-PI on the AI FAST Challenge grant "E-GAISE: Ethical Generative AI in Undergraduate Computer Science Education" (2025-2026) and as SFSU PI on a subaward from UC Santa Cruz for scaling a national webcam coastal observation system (2025-2026). He has contributed to program committees, including the VDS symposium at IEEE Visualization Conference (2023), and as Associate Chair for ACM CSCW posters (2023).
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