Rate My Professor Samitha Elvitigala

Don Samitha Elvitigala is a Senior Lecturer in the Exertion Games Lab within the Department of Human Centred Computing, Faculty of Information Technology at Monash University. His research investigates novel human augmentations that can enhance human capabilities by implicitly understanding humans' physical and mental behaviours, particularly exploring the use of everyday clothes and clothing accessories to develop augmented human interfaces in areas such as human-computer interaction, wearable computing, haptics, ubiquitous computing, and human-centered computing. He has published his work in premier peer-reviewed HCI conferences and journals, such as CHI, UIST, MobileHCI, UbiComp, and ToCHI, with some publications receiving honorable mention and best paper awards.

Elvitigala completed his PhD in Human-Computer Interaction titled "Uncovering the Potential of the Foot for Novel I/O Interfaces" at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute, University of Auckland, in July 2021. The dissertation won the Best PhD Thesis Prize from ABI in 2021, was selected to the Graduate School Dean's List, and nominated for the ACM Dissertation Award; its concept was runner-up for best presentation at the UbiComp 2018 Doctoral Colloquium. Before joining Monash, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the School of Computer Science and Engineering at UNSW Sydney, where he co-created the HCI BoDi Lab to investigate networks of human augmentations for community context and environmental sensing. Key publications include "TickleFoot: Design, Development and Evaluation of a Novel Foot-Tickling Mechanism That Can Evoke Laughter" (2022, ACM TOCHI), "RadarFoot: Fine-grain Ground Surface Context Awareness for Smart Shoes" (2023, UIST), "StressShoe: A DIY Toolkit for Just-in-Time Personalised Stress Interventions for Office Workers Performing Sedentary Tasks" (2021, MobileHCI, Honorable Mention Award), "GymSoles++: Combining Google Glass with Smart Insoles to Improve Body Posture when Performing Squats" (2021, PETRA, Best Student Paper Award), and "Augmented Foot: A Comprehensive Survey of Augmented Foot Interfaces" (2021). Additional awards include Velocity Innovation Challenge PhD Category winner (2018) and third place in NUS Medical Grand Challenge (2017). His contributions advance the field through innovative bodily interfaces.