Doctor Amil Wickramasinghe

Biography

Amil Wickramasinghe is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Fire Risk Modelling at the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment. His research focuses on developing spatially explicit fire risk forecasting methods for the forest regions of southeast Australia, utilising a combination of machine learning and process-based models. His work is funded by the Australian Research Council Discovery Grant (DP220100795) and supervised by Professor Matthias Boer.

Dr. Wickramasinghe earned his PhD in Engineering from Victoria University, Australia, with a thesis titled Mapping Firebrand and Heat Flux on Structures in the Wildland-Urban Interface. His research introduced novel correlations to quantify firebrand attacks on structures under various fire weather conditions, with the aim of improving the Australian building standard AS3959.

In addition to his doctoral research, Amila holds a bachelor’s degree in chemical and process engineering from the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. He has diverse industrial and academic experience, spanning coal power generation, wind power modelling, wildland fire modelling, water and wastewater treatment, process optimization and standardization, energy recovery and reuse, and textile dyeing and finishing in Sri Lanka, China, Germany, and Australia. Since 2023, he has also held a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Tasmania, where his research focuses on wildfire modelling, particularly in the areas of firebrand transport, lightning ignitions, and fuel dryness.

Areas of Research

Wildland fire modelling (physics-based and machine learning models), firebrand generation and transport, wind power modelling, environmental pollution modelling, deep learning for wildfire forecasting, Remote sensing.

Awards and Recognition

VU Strategic Research Scholarship (Wildland-Urban Interface Fires)

Asia-Pacific 3MT (Three-Minute Thesis) Competition: Winner (2022), Runner-up (2021), Victoria University

Unilever Award for Best Final Year Comprehensive Design Project in Chemical and Process Engineering

Best Research Paper Award at the International Research Symposium on Engineering Advancements

Inventor in Engineering Applications Award

Outstanding Participation in Extracurricular Activities Award

Secomb Research Fund

National Awards as a Novelist

Grants

Recipient of the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) Australia Grant 2023 (Quarter 3 and 4) under the Adapter Scheme.

Selected Publications

Wickramasinghe, A. M., Boer, M. M., Cunningham, C. X., Nolan, R. H., Bowman, D. M., & Williamson, G. J. (2024). Modelling the probability of dry lightning‐induced wildfires in Tasmania: A machine learning approach. Geophysical Research Letters, 51(16), e2024GL110381. doi: https://doi.org/10.1029/2024GL110381

Wickramasinghe, A., Khan, N., Filkov, A., & Moinuddin, K. (2023a). Physics-based modelling for mapping firebrand flux and heat load on structures in the wildland–urban interface. International journal of wildland fire, 32(11), 1576-1599. doi: https://doi.org/10.1071/WF22119

Wickramasinghe, A., Khan, N., Filkov, A., & Moinuddin, K. (2023b). Quantifying Firebrand and Radiative Heat Flux Risk on Structures in Mallee/Mulga-Dominated Wildland–Urban Interface: A Physics-Based Approach. Fire, 6(12), 466. doi: https://doi.org/10.3390/fire6120466

Wickramasinghe, A., Khan, N., & Moinuddin, K. (2020). Physics-based simulation of firebrand and heat flux on structures in the context of AS3959.

Wickramasinghe, A., Khan, N., & Moinuddin, K. (2022). Determining Firebrand Generation Rate Using Physics-Based Modelling from Experimental Studies through Inverse Analysis. Fire, 5(1), 6. doi: https://doi.org/10.3390/fire5010006