Zilverling

dr. C.M. Epa Ranasinghe (Champika)

Lecturer
EEMCS-CS-DMB
Zilverling 4047
c.m.eparanasinghe@utwente.nl
+31534899189
Business card

Champika is a lecturer in Computer Science at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, and Computer Science (EEMCS) and is a member of the Data Management and Biometrics (DMB) group (https://www.utwente.nl/en/eemcs/dmb/people/). Her journey includes a PhD from the Situated Computing and Interaction group of the University Munster, Germany, two Master's degrees ( Master in Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering, and a Master in Information Technology) and a BSc (Honours) degree in Statistics and Computer Science. Before joining the University of Twente, Champika worked as a Content Manager at Innodata (https://innodata.com) and as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Moratuwa in Sri Lanka (https://uom.lk).

Grants:

  • Pioneers In Healthcare Innovation Fund 2025 (Main Applicant) (link) | Title: SmartRoll: A Smart, situated physical activity guidance system for stimulating frail older adults rehabilitating after a hip fracture surgery
  • University of Twente, EEMCS Internal Research Voucher 2025 (Main Applicant) | Title: TRUPA: Trusted Physical Activity Guidance for Frail Older Adults
  • 4TU Design United Probe Funding 2025 (Co-applicant) | Title: Tangible Mind - Cognitive Data Physicalisation for Sense Making and Self-Reflection 
  • Prof. V K Samaranayake Research and Conference Grant (2013) (Main Applicant), LK Domain Registry, Sri Lanka.

Awards

  • SmartRollator Project - Pioneers in Healthcare Innovation Award - 2025 for the  (link), January 2026.
  • SmartRollator Project: Finalist in the Dutch Geriatric Innovation Award 2026 (SmartRollator Project) (link), Dutch Association for Clinical Geriatrics (Nederlandse Vereniging voor Klinische Geriatrie (NVKG)), February 2026.
  • Best Data-driven Healthcare Solution Award at Dutch Hacking Health 2018, Utrecht, Netherlands. (Link)

Conference Commitees:

  • ACM Interactive Health (IH) 2026, Porto, Portugal, July 5-8, 2026. Member of the Programme Commitee. <link>
  • ACM MobileHCI 2020 (International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services), 2020, Oldenburg, Germany; Co-chair : Student Competition. <link>
  • ACM MUM 2020 (International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia), 2020, Essen, Germany; Co-chair : Posters <link>
  • IEEE ITSC 2013 (IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Conference), 2013, Den Haag, Netherlands; Session chair (Session: " Data Mining and Data Analysis II")

Supervision

  • PhD Supervision/ PhD Committees
    • Member of the PhD Committee of Vanessa Georges, Polytechnique Montréal, Quebec, Canada (Defended on 20.08.2025) : Thesis Title: Exploring the Use of Neurophysiological Signals as a Design Material for Affective Data Visualization, Somatic Interaction and Physicalization. <link>
  • Bachelor and Master Thesis Supervision (Computer science, Creative Technology, Biomedical engineering, Interaction technology, Human centered interaction design):  
    • 15 Master thesis supervisions
    • 61 Bachelor thesis supervisions

Organisations

I am an HCI researcher with a special focus on healthcare interaction technology and human-data/AI-interaction. I design innovative ways to transform digital healthcare data and coaching into novel forms (data physicalizations and sensifications), interactions, and experiences that engage and stimulate people towards a healthy lifestyle, empower people to self-manage their health conditions and support shared decision making. This includes exploring innovative ways to acquire, model, present, and embed complex healthcare data (including physiological, behavioral, and environmental data) to facilitate situated interaction with data and coaching. In contrast to current approaches that prioritize data access over sensemaking, I explore novel ways to make data interaction-triggering and enhance sensemaking from data. I put human factors and ergonomics at the center of healthcare solution design and involve stakeholders in every stage of the design and evaluation process. I follow a human-centered and design thinking-driven approach, utilizing participatory design, co-creation, and collaborative design methods, as well as smart and ubiquitous sensing and actuation technologies, to design solutions that motivate people to participate and engage.

Publications

Jump to: 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018

2025

Change Point Detection for Continuous Physiological Monitoring using Wearables (2025)[Contribution to conference › Abstract] 10th Dutch Biomedical Engineering Conference, BME 2025. Tjepkema, W., John, A., Vernooij, L., Epa Ranasinghe, C. M., van Beijnum, B.-J. F. & Breteler, M.Reducing Late Night Snacking: Exploring the Potential of Ambient Tangible Interfaces (2025)[Contribution to conference › Poster] 10th Dutch Biomedical Engineering Conference, BME 2025. Jeuring, J., Epa Ranasinghe, C. M. & Gerhold, M.

2024

SixFeet Reimagined: An Interactive Exercise System to Support Sport Specific Training in Pandemic Times (2024)In NordiCHI '24: Proceedings of the Nordic CHI Conference 2024, Uppsala, Sweden, October 13-16, 2024 (pp. 1-12). Article 23. ACM Publishing. Postma, D. B. W., De Ruiter, A. R., Ranasinghe, C. M. & Reidsma, D.https://doi.org/10.1145/3679318.368535Data Physicalization and Tangible Manipulation for Engaging Children with Data: An Example with Air Quality Data (2024)In IDC '24: Proceedings of the 23rd ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference (pp. 507-516). ACM Publishing. de Kreij, S., Ranasinghe, C. & Degbelo, A.https://doi.org/10.1145/3628516.3655788Data Physicalization with Haptic Variables: Exploring Resistance and Friction (2024)In CHI '24: Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-8). Article 94. ACM Publishing. Dullaert, S., Epa Ranasinghe, C. M., Degbelo, A. & Bouali, N.https://doi.org/10.1145/3613905.3651011

2023

WashWall: An Interactive Smart Mirror for Motivating Handwashing Among Primary School Children (2023)In Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2023: 19th IFIP TC13 International Conference, York, UK, August 28 – September 1, 2023, Proceedings, Part II (pp. 234-253) (Lecture Notes in Computer Science; Vol. 14143). Springer. Postma, D. B. W., Ranasinghe, C. M., Constantinou, C., Diks, V. P. G., Rhee, Y., van Dijk, W. H. P., Sassanian, A. & Reidsma, D.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-42283-6_14Encoding Variables, Evaluation Criteria, and Evaluation Methods for Data Physicalisations: A Review (2023)Multimodal Technologies and Interaction, 7(7). Article 73. Epa Ranasinghe, C. M. & Degbelo, A.https://doi.org/10.3390/mti7070073Encoding Variables, Evaluation Criteria and Evaluation Methods for Data Physicalizations: A Review (2023)[Working paper › Preprint]. ArXiv.org. Ranasinghe, C. & Degbelo, A.Position Paper: Physicalization of Human Body Sensing Data (2023)In CHI 2023 Workshop on Physicalization from Theory to Practice: Exploring Physicalization Design across Domains. Epa Ranasinghe, C. M. & Bults, R. G. A.http://dataphys.org/workshops/chi23/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2023/04/Physicalization-of-Human-Body-Sensing-Data.pdfEmoClock: Communicating Real-Time Emotional States Through Data Physicalizations (2023)In Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2023: 19th IFIP TC13 International Conference, York, UK, August 28 – September 1, 2023, Proceedings, Part I (pp. 416-425) (Lecture Notes in Computer Science; Vol. 14142). Springer. Peeters, D., Ranasinghe, C., Degbelo, A. & Ahmad, F.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-42280-5_26

2022

Physicalizing Sustainable Development Goals Data: An Example with SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy) (2022)In CHI EA '22: Extended Abstracts of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Article 346. Association for Computing Machinery. van Loenhout, R., Ranasinghe, C., Degbelo, A. & Bouali, N.https://doi.org/10.1145/3491101.3519638SixFeet: An Interactive, Corona-Safe, Multiplayer Sports Platform (2022)In TEI '22: Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (pp. 1-7). Article 3505570. ACM Publishing. Postma, D., de Ruiter, A., Reidsma, D. & Ranasinghe, C.https://doi.org/10.1145/3490149.3505570

2021

Multimodal (and more physical) Interaction to Improve In-Car User Experience (2021)In Human-Computer Interaction to Support Work and Wellbeing in Mobile Environments (pp. 33-34) (Dagstuhl Reports; Vol. 11). Dagstuhl. Ranasinghe, C.https://doi.org/10.4230/DagRep.11.5.23

2020

Autonomous Vehicle-Pedestrian Interaction Across Cultures: Towards Designing Better External Human Machine Interfaces (eHMIs) (2020)In CHI EA '20: Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1–8). ACM Publishing. Ranasinghe, C., Holländer, K., Schneegass, S., Currano, R., Sirkin, D., Moore, D. & Ju, W.https://doi.org/10.1145/3334480.3382957

2019

Adapting Navigation Support to Location Information Quality: A Human Centered Approach (2019)In Adjunct Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Location Based Services (LBS 2019), LBS 2019, 11–13 November 2019, Vienna, Austria (pp. 71-83). Vienna University of Technology. Ranasinghe, C. & Kray, C.Evaluating user experience under location quality variations: A framework for in-the-wild studies (2019)In MobileHCI '19: Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services. Article 45. Association for Computing Machinery. Ranasinghe, C., Heitmann, S., Pfeiffer, M. & Kray, C.https://doi.org/10.1145/3338286.3344392Visualising Location Uncertainty to Support Navigation under Degraded GPS Signals: a Comparison Study (2019)In MobileHCI '19: Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and ServicesOctober 2019 Article (pp. 1-11). ACM Publishing. Ranasinghe, C., Schiestel, N. & Kray, C.https://doi.org/10.1145/3338286.3340128

2018

Pedestrian navigation and GPS deteriorations: user behavior and adaptation strategies (2018)In OzCHI '18: Proceedings of the 30th Australian Conference on Computer-Human Interaction (pp. 266–277). ACM Publishing. Epa Ranasinghe, C. M., Heitmann, S., Hamzin, A., Pfeiffer, M. & Kray, C.https://doi.org/10.1145/3292147.3292154Location Information Quality: A Review (2018)Sensors (Switzerland), 18(11). Article 3999. Epa Ranasinghe, C. M. & Kray, C.https://doi.org/10.3390/s18113999Visualizing Location Uncertainty on Mobile Devices: Cross-Cultural Differences in Perceptions and Preferences (2018)Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies, 2(1). Article 30. Epa Ranasinghe, C. M., Krukar, J. & Kray, C.https://doi.org/10.1145/3191762

Research profiles

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University of Twente

Zilverling (building no. 11), room 4047
Hallenweg 19
7522 NH Enschede
Netherlands

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University of Twente

Zilverling (building no. 11), room 1054
Hallenweg 19
7522 NH Enschede
Netherlands

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University of Twente

Zilverling (building no. 11)
Hallenweg 19
7522 NH Enschede
Netherlands

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