CHANAKA LAKMAL

PhD Student in Computer Science at UWaterloo | ex-WSO2 (Associate Technical Lead)
Chanaka Lakmal @ldclakmal ldclakmal@gmail.com
chanaka [DOT] lakmal [AT] uwaterloo [DOT] ca

linkedin   github   medium   twitter   stackoverflow   google-scholar   flickr

I am a PhD student in Computer Science at the University of Waterloo, advised by Prof. Khuzaima Daudjee.

I completed my B.Sc. in Computer Science and Engineering with a First Class at the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka in 2018. I was an Associate Technical Lead at WSO2 Inc., where I was full-time contributing to the project Ballerina, an open-source programming language for the cloud with first-class support to write microservices that integrate APIs. I was mainly focusing on the cloud-native security architecture, microservices architecture, authentication, authorization, cryptography, and language security aspects.

My projects have been recognized at prestigious events such as Microsoft Imagine Cup World Finals and National Best Quality ICT Awards (NBQSA) and have been covered by the local and international press.

I love travelling, exploring new destinations, and cultures and capturing memories into beautiful pictures.



EDUCATION

uwaterloo logo Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Computer Science
University of Waterloo, Canada
2022 - Present
uom logo Bachelor of Science in Engineering (First Class Hons.)
specialized in Computer Science and Engineering
University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka
2014 - 2018



PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCES

University of Waterloo - David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
uwaterloo logo The David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science of University of Waterloo is the largest academic concentration of Computer Science researchers in Canada. According to the Maclean’s 2025 university rankings, UWaterloo is first in Canada for the fifth consecutive year based on its program and research reputation.

  • Graduate Teaching Assistant (Sep 2022 – Present)

WSO2 Inc.
wso2 logo WSO2 is an open source technology provider which gives enterprises the flexibility to deploy applications and services on-premises, on private or public clouds, or in hybrid environments. Hundreds of leading brands and thousands of global projects execute over 18 trillion transactions annually using WSO2 technologies.

  • Associate Technical Lead (Jun 2021 – Aug 2022)
  • Senior Software Engineer (Jul 2019 – May 2021)
  • Software Engineer (Jan 2018 – Jun 2019)

AdroitLogic
adroitlogic logo AdroitLogic is a privately held innovative technology company founded in January 2010. Its core values of Quality, Performance and Ease of use, saves organizations time spent in development of Enterprise Integration flows - resulting in shorter time to market, better development and test experiences, and savings in infrastructure deployment and management costs, due to the performance and operational efficiencies of the products.

  • Software Engineering Intern (Jul 2016 – Dec 2016)

Rotaract Club of University of Moratuwa
rotaract mora logo Rotaract Club of University of Moratuwa initiated in 1995, is the first ever institution based Rotaract Club of Sri Lanka. With only 16 members at its origin, the club has been walking on a glorious path for the last 2 decades, holding its position as the strongest vibrant student association within the university.

  • Director - Information Technology (Jul 2016 – Jul 2017)



TECHNICAL SKILLS

Domain Expertise
(Cloud & Serverless)		 AWS, Microsoft Azure, GCP, Apache OpenWhisk, OpenFaaS
Domain Expertise
(IAM & Security)		 SSL\TLS, mTLS, Basic Authentication, JWT, JWK, JWS, OAuth, LDAP, SSO, MFA, Cryptography, Hashing, Encryption, Digital Signature
Domain Expertise
(API & Integration)		 REST, HTTP, HTTP/2, GraphQL, gRPC, WebSocket, WebSub, (S)FTP, TCP/IP, UDP
Programming JAVA, Python, C++, C, Go, Ballerina, JSP, Servlets, PHP, C#, HTML 5, JS, SQL, XML, CSS
Framework Spring, MSF4J, Hibernate, Electron, Bootstrap 3
Database MySQL, MongoDB, Apache Ignite
CI/CD Git, Mercurial, Travis CI, Jenkins, GitHub Actions
Test Automation Junit, TestNG, Apache JMeter, WRK
Build Tools Apache Maven, Gradle, CMake
DevOps Docker, Kubernetes



PUBLICATIONS

Conference Papers

Specifications

Designs & Proposals

Blogs

CONFERENCE / WORKSHOPS / WEBINARS



HONOURS & AWARDS

imagine cup world finals imagine cup big pitch icames imagine cup national finals nbqsa 2017
google io yarl geek challenge nbqsa 2015 mora hack rotaract digital communication
link rotaract rotaract year 2016/17 wso2

INTERNATIONAL

Microsoft Imagine Cup 2016 - Innovation - World Finals (Seattle, USA) [1]
awards icon 2nd Place / 10,000+ teams
Microsoft Imagine Cup 2016 - Innovation - Big Pitch Competition [2]
awards icon Honourable Mention (Top 10 in World)
22nd International Cultural Academic Meeting of Engineering Students 2016 (Istanbul, Turkey)
awards icon World Top 25 / 100+ teams

NATIONAL (SRI LANKA)

Microsoft Imagine Cup 2016 - Innovation - National Finals [3]
awards icon 1st Place / 60+ teams
19th National Best Quality Software Awards 2017 (NBQSA 2017) [4]
awards icon MERIT Award / 250+ teams
Google I/O Extended 2015 organized by Mobitel (Pvt) Ltd., Sri Lanka
awards icon 1st Place (Best Innovation) / 80+ teams
Yarl Geek Challenge Season 4 2015[5]
awards icon 1st Place / 100+ teams
17th National Best Quality Software Awards 2015 (NBQSA 2015) [6]
awards icon MERIT Award / 150+ teams
Code4Good Hackathon 2015 organized by Facebook, Internews, International Alert, SLASSCOM
awards icon Top 6 / 20+ teams
Ideamart MoraHack 2015 organized by Dialog Axiata PLC., Sri Lanka
awards icon 1st Place / 25+ teams
SLIIT CodeFest 2015 organized by Faculty of Computing of SLIIT, Sri Lanka
awards icon MERIT Award / 50+ teams
XtremeCS 2015 organized by ACM Chapter of University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka
awards icon 4th Place / 50+ teams
For Strengthening The Digital Communication Services of the Rotaract District 3220 (2016/17)
awards icon Award of Service
LinkR - Most Outstanding #ICT4Dev Project of the Rotaract District 3220 (2016/17)
awards icon Platinum Award
Rotaract Club of University of Moratuwa of the Rotaract District 3220 (2016/17)
awards icon Most Outstanding Rotaract Club
Annual Award Ceremony 2019, WSO2 Inc.
awards icon Sustained Outstanding Contribution / 600+ employees
Annual Award Ceremony 2020, WSO2 Inc.
awards icon Sustained Outstanding Contribution / 700+ employees



PROJECTS

Ballerina | Cloud Native Programming Language

link https://ballerina.io
link https://ldclakmal.me/ballerina-security
github https://github.com/ballerina-platform/ballerina-lang

IDStack | The Common Protocol for Document Verification | Academic Research Project

link https://idstack.github.io
github https://github.com/idstack

CourtEka.LK | Sports Facilities Reservation Online Portal

Are You Ready? 2015

link http://www.areyouready.uom.lk

AMPLUS | Learn - Adapt – Advertise

link https://ldclakmal.me/amplus

NIO File Transport for UltraESB / Project-X

github https://github.com/ldclakmal/nio-file-transport
book https://developer.adroitlogic.com/connectors/docs/17.07/nio_file/nio_file_ingress_connector.html

SCP File Transport for UltraESB / Project-X

github https://github.com/ldclakmal/scp-transport
book https://developer.adroitlogic.com/connectors/docs/17.07/scp/scp_ingress_connector.html

AS2 Station / AS2 Gateway

link https://as2gateway.com/
book https://developer.adroitlogic.com/as2gateway/docs/1.1.0/

LinkR | Link Rotaract

link https://linkr.rotaractmora.org/

URO.LK

link http://www.uro.lk



TIMELINE

Date Description References
Sep 2022 Started PhD in Computer Science at University of Waterloo, Canada  
Feb 2022 Released Ballerina Ballerina 2201.0.0 (Swan Lake) programming language (open-source project), which I contributed full-time as a technical lead to drive the cloud native architecture of identity and access management (IAM), authentication, authorization, cryptography, encoding frameworks/APIs, and overall security aspects of the language. [Article]
Jun 2021 Promoted as an Associate Technical Lead at WSO2 Inc. - Team: Ballerina [Web]
Jan 2021 Awarded for Sustained Outstanding Contributions in 2020 by WSO2 Inc. [Photo]
Jun 2020 Released Ballerina first preview of Ballerina Swan Lake programming language (open-source project), which I contributed full-time as a senior engineer to design and implement the cloud native architecture of identity and access management (IAM), authentication, authorization, cryptography, encoding frameworks/APIs, and overall security aspects of the language. [Article]
Jan 2020 Conducted “Microservices Security in Practice with Ballerina“ session for MIT undergraduates with related to MIT Independent Activities Period (IAP) [Article] [Article]
Jan 2020 Awarded for Sustained Outstanding Contributions in 2019 by WSO2 Inc. [Photo]
Sep 2019 Released Ballerina v1.0 programming language (open-source project), which I contributed full-time as a senior engineer to redesign the security architecture and to develop the Ballerina authentication and authorization frameworks (Basic Auth, JWT Auth, OAuth2). [Article] [Photo]
Jul 2019 Promoted as a Senior Software Engineer at WSO2 Inc. - Team: Ballerina  
Oct 2018 Graduated with Bachelor of Science in Engineering (First Class Hons.) specialized in Computer Science and Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Moratuwa [Photo]
Jun 2018 Presented a research paper on “Measuring the Correlation of Personal Identity Documents in Structured Format” at 17th IEEE/ACIS International Conference on Computer and Information Science (ICIS 2018), Singapore [PDF] [Slides]
Jan 2018 Started career as Software Engineer at WSO2 Inc.  
Jan 2018 Completed B.Sc. in Computer Science and Engineering at University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka  
Nov 2017 Presented the final year project on “IDStack – The Common Protocol for Document Verification built on Digital Signatures” to the evaluation panel of Prof. Gihan Dias, Prof. Sanath Jayasena, Dr. Shantha Fernando and Dr. Sulochana Sooriyaarachchi [Slides] [Web] [Code]
Sep 2017 MERIT Award at 19th National Best Quality Software Awards 2017 (NBQSA 2017) [Web]
Sep 2017 Presented a research paper on “IDStack – The Common Protocol for Document Verification built on Digital Signatures” at 35th National Information Technology Conference (NITC 2017) in partnership with South East Asia Regional Computer Confederation (SEARCC), Sri Lanka [PDF] [Slides] [Photo]
Jul 2017 Awarded for the Digital Communication Services of the Rotaract District 3220 (2016/17) [Photo]
Jul 2017 Platinum Award - Most Outstanding #ICT4Dev Project for the project LinkR at Rotaract District 3220 (2016/17) [Photo]
Jul 2017 Awarded for the Most Outstanding Rotaract Club at Rotaract District 3220 (2016/17) [Photo]
Jul 2016 Started internship as a Software Engineering Intern at AdroitLogic Lanka (Pvt) Ltd., Sri Lanka  
Jul 2016 2nd Place at Microsoft Imagine Cup 2016 - Innovation - World Finals (Seattle, USA) [Article] [Photo]
Jul 2016 1st Place at Microsoft Imagine Cup 2016 - Innovation - National Finals [Article] [Photo] [Video]
Jul 2016 Started duties as the Director - Information Technology at Rotaract Club of University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka  
May 2016 Recognized for the World Top 25 projects at 22nd International Cultural Academic Meeting of Engineering Students 2016 (Turkey) [Photo]
Dec 2015 1st Place at Yarl Geek Challenge 2015 - Season 4 [Article] [Photo]
Nov 2015 Honourable Mention (Top 10 in World) at Microsoft Imagine Cup 2016 - Innovation - Big Pitch Competition [Article] [Photo]
Nov 2015 MERIT Award at SLIIT CodeFest 2015 organized by Faculty of Computing of SLIIT, Sri Lanka  
Oct 2015 Participated for IEEEXtreme 9.0 2015 - Country Rank: 54 - World Rank: 396  
Sep 2015 Top 6 at Code4Good Hackathon organized by Facebook, Internews, International Alert, SLASSCOM  
Sep 2015 1st Place at Ideamart MoraHack 2015 organized by Dialog Axiata PLC., Sri Lanka [Photo]
Sep 2015 MERIT Award at 17th National Best Quality Software Awards 2015 (NBQSA 2015) [Web]
Jul 2015 4th Place at XtremeCS 2015 organized by ACM Chapter of University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka  
May 2015 1st Place (Best Innovation) at Google I/O Extended 2015 organized by Mobitel (Pvt) Ltd., Sri Lanka [Photo]
Oct 2014 Participated for IEEEXtreme 8.0 2014 - Country Rank: 78 - World Rank: 571  
Jan 2014 Started B.Sc. in Engineering at University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka  

[1]
Microsoft Imagine Cup [29 Jul 2016] - 2016 World Champions
Microsoft Blog [29 Jul 2016] - Announcing Microsoft’s Imagine Cup 2016 World Champion!
Microsoft [2 Aug 2016] - Asia teams impress at Imagine Cup 2016
Daily Mirror [1 Aug 2016] - BitMasters wins big at Microsoft Imagine Cup
The Sunday Times [14 Aug 2016] - BitMasters recognized and congratulated by government
Flickr [01 Aug 2016] - Imagine Cup 2016 - Flickr

[2]
Microsoft Imagine [03 Nov 2015] - Announcing the 2016 Big Idea: Pitch Winners!
Microsoft Imagine [03 Nov 2015] - 2016 Big Idea: Pitch Challenge

[3]
The Sunday Times [24 Jul 2016] - Sri Lanka team, BitMasters make their way to the International Imagine Cup Finals
Daily Mirror [18 Jul 2016] - Moratuwa Uni team to take part in Microsoft Imagine Cup Finals
Ceylon Business Reporter [13 Jul 2016] - Sri Lanka team, BitMasters make their way to the International Imagine Cup Finals
Ada Derana Biz [01 Jul 2016] - Sri Lanka team, BitMasters make their way to the International Imagine Cup Finals
Sinhala Geek Show - Chanux Bro [26 Jul 2016] - Microsoft Imagine Cup 2016 Sri Lanka Winners and Amplus

[4]
NBQSA [14 Sep 2017] - Winners - NBQSA 2017

[5]
Daily Mirror [28 Dec 2015] - Yarl Geek Challenge Season 4 comes to an end
Daily FT [28 Dec 2015] - Yarl Geek Challenge Season 4 comes to an end
Ceylon Business Reporter [17 Dec 2015] - Yarl Geek Challenge Season 4 comes to an end
Daily News [16 Dec 2015] - Yarl Geek Challenge Season 4 concludes The Sunday Times [20 Dec 2015] - ‘AMPLUS’ smart ad display software wins Jaffna-based YGC

[6]
NBQSA [01 Oct 2015] - Winners - NBQSA 2015