Recently appointed Future Engineering Research Leadership (FERL) scholar Dr Prasanga Samarasinghe from The Australian National University (ANU) Research School of Electrical, Energy and Materials Engineering has received the prestigious Fulbright Future Scholarship, funded by The Kinghorn Foundation.

Dr Samarasinghe works in Audio and Acoustic Signal Processing, and much of her research focuses on spatial audio, room acoustics, microphone and loud speaker arrays, and noise cancellation.

As part of this scholarship, Dr Samarasinghe will undertake research at the PIRL Laboratory at the University of Maryland, College Park. The research will focus on acoustic modelling - which is essential in a range of audio applications such as virtual reality technology, surround sound entertainment and listening aids for the hearing impaired.

She hopes to advance her areas of interest by developing a data driven approach to model the room response between directional transducers or any acoustic environment.

Dr Samarasinghe, now an established researcher, joined ANU in 2010 as PhD student after completing her undergraduate Engineering degree at the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka.

Hugh Johnson, a 2018 ANU graduate of a Bachelor of Science/Bachelor of Engineering (Research and Development) was also a recipient of a postgraduate Fulbright Scholarship, and will undertake further study in the United States.

Click here to see a full list of ANU 2019 Fulbright Scholarship recipients.