About
Nadil Gunawardane. Engineer, researcher and volunteer from Sri Lanka.
Education
B.Sc. Eng. (Hons) Electronic & Telecommunication Engineering
University of Moratuwa, 2022 to 2026
Based in
Sri Lanka
I started with circuit boards and robot hardware, and now I'm focused on how robots learn.
I'm an Electronic & Telecommunication engineer from the University of Moratuwa. I want to work on robots that learn from what they see and what they're told, which is why I'm interested in vision-language-action models, reinforcement learning, and getting learned policies to hold up on real hardware.
I came to this from the hardware side. I've designed PCBs and robot control systems at NUS's MARMoT Lab, worked on camera-based drone localization at Qubebots, and built an EKF-SLAM pipeline, F1Tenth racing code and a semi-humanoid receptionist robot. I care about the whole loop: sensing, compute, control and learning.
- Public repositories
- 30+
- Research at NUS MARMoT Lab
- 6 mo
- Competition honours
- 5
- Robotics & drone R&D roles
- 3
Experience
Where I've worked. Research, engineering and teaching.
Dec 2024 to May 2025
Singapore
Research Intern
National University of Singapore · MARMoT Laboratory
- Designed, developed and validated bespoke printed circuit boards for lab robot platforms.
- Built and tested robot control systems as part of ongoing robotics and automation research.
- Worked alongside graduate researchers and staff, trading ideas across hardware and software.
PCB design · Robot control · Embedded systems · Research
Dec 2023 to Sep 2024
Sri Lanka
Research Associate
Qubebots · Xfly drone platform
- Researched camera-based localization for the Xfly drone using the onboard embedded camera.
- Built a battery state and flight-time estimation system from calibrated voltage measurements.
Computer vision · Drones · Localization · Embedded
Jun 2024 to Nov 2024
Moratuwa, Sri Lanka
Visiting Instructor
University of Moratuwa · EN2533 Robot Design & Competition
- Ran practical sessions for the undergraduate robot design module.
- Co-designed the module's robot competition with the instructor team and assessed lab work.
Teaching · Mentoring · Robotics
Leadership & volunteering
Outside the lab. IEEE, Leo Club and school, since 2016.
Leadership
Project Co-Chair, MoraForesight 1.0
2022 to 2023
IEEE Student Branch, University of Moratuwa
Co-led a three-day camp on programming and robotics for 80 A/L students selected from across the country.
Web Development & Media Co-lead
2023 to 2024
IEEE Student Branch, University of Moratuwa
Led the team covering branch events with photos and video, and looked after the branch's web presence.
Treasurer
2023 to 2024
IEEE Signal Processing Society, UoM chapter
Managed the chapter's finances and kept spending in line with IEEE rules.
Treasurer
2023 to 2024
Leo Club of Matara Nilwala
Handled the club account, cash and treasury reports, and planned fundraising.
Director of IT
2022 to 2023
Leo Club of Matara Nilwala
Ran the club's social media across Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, X and LinkedIn.
Department Coordinator
2023
EXMO, University of Moratuwa
Coordinated the Electronic & Telecommunication department's part of the exhibition for the 21st batch.
Volunteering
Volunteer, Training & Development
2024 to 2025
IEEE Young Professionals Sri Lanka
Helped run events and volunteer development for the People Management pillar.
Member Activities, Logistics
2023 to 2024
IEEE Sri Lanka Section, SLSAC
Worked on logistics for section events such as the Student/YP/WIE Congress, IEEE Boost and IEEE Adaheraya.
Finance committee member
2022 to 2023
IEEE Student Branch, University of Moratuwa
Helped track the branch's budgets, expenses and revenue.
Member
2020 to 2024
Leo Club of Matara Nilwala
Took part in the club's community service projects, starting as a prospect in 2020.
Prefect
2016 to 2020
Rahula College, Matara
Four years on the prefects' guild, from apprentice to senior prefect.
Skills
Tools I use. Languages, frameworks and hardware.
Robotics & Physical AI
- ROS 2 Humble
- ROS 1 Noetic
- SLAM
- EKF / state estimation
- Kinematics
- Autonomous navigation
- NVIDIA Jetson
Machine Learning & Vision
- PyTorch
- Keras
- scikit-learn
- OpenCV
- YOLO
- Trajectory prediction
- End-to-end driving
Embedded & Hardware
- STM32
- ESP32
- Arduino
- Raspberry Pi
- Altium Designer
- SolidWorks
- LTspice
- Quartus
Languages
- Python
- C++
- C
- MATLAB
Honours
- Robofest Micromouse, 5th place2024
- Robofest2021
- Idealize2021
- Arimac Futurecast Ideathon
- Raspberry Pi Challenge2017
- Science Research Project Competition2016
Certifications
- Introduction to Computer Vision and Image Processing
- Python Programming
- Python for Beginners
- Web Design for Beginners
Languages
- SinhalaNative
- EnglishFull professional
- TamilElementary