Rate My Professor Niranga Amarasingha

Professor Niranga Amarasingha is a Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering at the Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology (SLIIT), where she joined in 2013. Specializing in Transportation Engineering, she possesses over 20 years of training and experience across Sri Lanka, the USA, the Netherlands, India, and Thailand. Her academic background includes a BSc (Honours) in Civil Engineering from the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka; an MSc in Civil/Transportation Engineering from Thammasat University, Thailand, funded by an Asian Development Bank scholarship; and a PhD in Civil/Transportation Engineering from Kansas State University, USA, where she also worked as a post-doctoral associate. She began her career as a civil engineer in industry, transitioned to academia as a lecturer at the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, and now teaches transportation engineering modules at SLIIT. Additionally, she serves as President of the Sri Lanka Society of Transport and Logistics (SLSTL) and contributes to national-level transportation projects.

Professor Amarasingha's research specializations include traffic engineering and operations, transportation system modeling, planning and simulation, safety and human factors, highway/street design, railroad engineering, and multi-criteria decision making. She has earned major awards such as Principal Investigator of an AHEAD Research Grant from the World Bank, best paper awards at the 6th and 5th International Conferences on Research for Transport & Logistics Industry and the 6th National Conference on Technology & Management, research excellence and teaching excellence awards from SLIIT, the Outstanding Civil Engineering Ph.D. Student Award from Kansas State University, poster awards at MWITE and TRB 4th Urban Street Symposium in Chicago and MWITE in Annapolis, the Missouri Valley Section of ITE Thomas J. Seburn Award at Student Paper Competition, and nominations for the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi and Golden Key International Honor Society. Key publications encompass "Gender Differences of Young Drivers on Injury Severity Outcome of Highway Crashes" (Journal of Safety Research, 2014), "Using social and economic factors for ranking pavement maintenance and rehabilitation projects" (Asian Transport Studies, 2020), "Household travel survey method for vehicle kilometers travel estimations: A case study in a developing country" (Transactions on Transport Sciences, 2021), "Optimization of VISSIM Driver Behavior Parameter Values Using Genetic Algorithm" (2023), and "Traffic Signal Controller Optimization Through VISSIM to Minimize Traffic Congestion, CO and NOx Emissions, and Fuel Consumption" (2023). Her scholarship influences transportation planning, safety, and efficiency in developing countries with heterogeneous traffic.