Dr Thiyanga S. Talagala
About me
Dr Thiyanga Shamini Talagala is a senior lecturer in Statistics at University of Sri
Jayewardenepura, Sri Lanka. She received her PhD in Statistics and Mathematics from Manash
University, Australia. She is also a founder and co-founder of R Ladies Colombo – the local
chapter of R Ladies Global, an organization that promotes diversity in the R programming
community worldwide. She is currently an Associate Editor of the R journal. Her research
focuses on developing new statistical machine learning tools to help both industry professionals
and researchers make more open, explainable, reproducible, and trustworthy data-driven
discoveries. She is the Judges' choice winner of Short-talk big impact competition 2025 organized by OWSD.
Dr. Thiyanga Shamini Talagala is a Senior Lecturer in Statistics at the University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Sri Lanka. She earned her PhD in Statistics and Mathematics from Monash University, Australia. Her academic journey reflects a deep commitment to bridging theoretical foundations with practical applications in data science and statistical learning.
Dr. Talagala’s research focuses on developing new statistical and machine learning methodologies to enable open, explainable, reproducible, and trustworthy data-driven discoveries. Her work spans diverse domains, including forecasting, spatio-temporal data analysis, water quality, and public health applications such as dengue surveillance and control.
She is the Founder of the Dengue Data Hub, an open-access, centralized data repository designed to support dengue researchers by reducing duplication of effort and promoting collaboration across disciplines. She has also authored and co-authored several R packages published on CRAN, contributing valuable tools to the global R and data science communities.
A passionate advocate for diversity and inclusion in technology, Dr. Talagala is the Founder and Co-Founder of R-Ladies Colombo, the Sri Lankan chapter of R-Ladies Global, an international organization that promotes gender diversity in the R programming community.
She currently serves as an Associate Editor of The R Journal, where she contributes to advancing open-source statistical research and reproducible reporting practices.
In recognition of her impactful science communication, Dr. Talagala was named the Judges’ Choice Winner of the Short Talk Big Impact competition (2025) organized by OWSD (Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World).
Through her teaching, research, and outreach, Dr. Talagala continues to inspire the next generation of statisticians and data scientists to use data ethically, transparently, and creatively for the betterment of society.