Yasas Senarath Wijesuriya

Yasas Senarath Wijesuriya

PhD · School of Computing, George Mason University

  • Neuro-symbolic AI
  • Continual Learning
  • Human-Centered AI
  • Streaming Data Analytics
  • Crisis Informatics

yasas.mason [at] gmail.com · Curriculum Vitae · Fairfax, VA

About

I recently completed my PhD in the School of Computing at George Mason University, advised by Dr. Hemant Purohit. The central theme of my research is structured knowledge integration for robust and adaptive AI — building systems that can adapt to real-world dynamic environments with the support of structured knowledge, bridging the gap between static model assumptions and the ever-changing nature of real-world data.

My dissertation develops the Knowledge-Guided Continual Learning (KGCL) framework, which models evolving human behavioral patterns in online data streams by integrating external knowledge graphs into continual learning models, enabling AI systems to detect behavioral shifts through NLP tasks such as intent detection, sentiment analysis, and hate speech detection while mitigating catastrophic forgetting.

Beyond the dissertation, my work spans emergency incident detection from crowdsourced data, human-AI teaming for crisis response, and real-time social media analytics for violence prevention, in collaboration with government agencies and international research partners.

Before joining GMU, I completed an MSc (Research) and BSc in Engineering (First Class Honours) at the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, where I worked on affect-level opinion mining and transfer learning for social media analytics.

Education

PhD in Information Technology
George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
Thesis: Modeling Evolving Human Behavior in Online Data Streams via Knowledge-Guided Continual Learning
Advisor: Dr. Hemant Purohit
May 2026
Master of Science in Applied Information Technology
George Mason University, Fairfax, VA · Cyber-Human Systems
Advisor: Dr. Hemant Purohit
Aug 2022
Master of Science (Research)
University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka
Thesis: Affect Level Opinion Mining of Twitter Streams
Advisor: Dr. Uthayasanker Thayasivam
Jun 2019
Bachelor of Science in Engineering (First Class Honours)
University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka
Advisor: Dr. Surangika Ranathunga
GPA: 3.95 / 4.20
Jan 2018

Experience

Humanitarian Informatics Lab, George Mason University
Designed methods and tools for real-time analytics of human behavior from social media data related to natural hazards and societal crises to inform decision support systems in government agencies.
Aug 2019 - Aug 2025
Center for Climate Change Communication, George Mason University
Analyzed the effectiveness of educational events related to Climate Change Communication by modeling the divergence in the communication behavior of participants using their social media content posted over time.
Jun 2021 - Aug 2021
DataSEARCH, University of Moratuwa
Researched methods for fine-grained emotion detection in Tweets using transfer learning.
Jan 2018 - Jul 2019
Trainee Software Engineer
CodeGen International (PVT) Ltd.
Opinion and entity extraction from reviews related to tourist attractions.
Jul 2016 - Dec 2016

Teaching

Continual Learning for Online Behavioral Analytics: A Tutorial
International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM) · Los Angeles, CA Accepted
with Dr. Marcos Zampieri, Dr. Hemant Purohit
2026
Graduate Teaching Assistant
George Mason University , Fairfax, VA
  • Database Fundamentals (Fall 2025, Spring 2026)
  • Data Analytics in Social Media (Fall 2025)
  • Introduction to Research in Applied IT (Spring 2026)
Aug 2025 – Present
Visiting Instructor
University of Moratuwa , Sri Lanka
  • Data Science
  • Advanced Algorithms
  • Data Structures
Jan 2018 – Jul 2019

Mentorship

Gayatri Ramchandra Vaidya
PhD Student
2026
Anuridhi Gupta
PhD Student
2025
Rajenthiran Jenarthanan
Undergraduate Student
2019

Grants & Funding

NSF SCC-IRG: Resilient Sheltering Decision Support for Emergency Evacuations using Explainable AI
National Science Foundation (NSF)
Developed technical approach and assisted in proposal writing
2025
Violence-Inducing Behaviour Prevention in Social-Cyber Space of Local Communities (SOCYTI)
Research Council of Norway (RCN)
Developed technical approach and assisted in proposal writing
2023
Provost Doctoral Research Scholarship
George Mason University
Awarded for research in Knowledge-Guided Continual Learning
2024

Service - Reviewer

International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM)
2021, 2023-2026
ACM Web Conference (WWW)
2021-2023, 2026
AAAI Conference on AI Ethics and Society (AIES)
2023-2025
ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW)
2024
ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM)
2022
ACM Conference on Human-AI Complementarity and Alignment (HCOMP)
2022-2023
IEEE Conference on Trust, Privacy and Security in Intelligent Systems (IEEE TPS)
2024
International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining (ASONAM)
2020-2022
ACM Web Science Conference (WebSci)
2020, 2024
International Workshop on Cyber Social Threats (CySoc)
2020, 2022, 2024
International Symposium on AI, Data, and Digitalization (SAIDD)
2020, 2023