Vindula Jayawardana

vindulamj [AT] gmail [DOT] com

I'm a Research Scientist in the Human-Centered AI divison at Toyota Research Institute. I obtained my PhD at MIT, working with Cathy Wu. My current research focuses on generative multi-agent systems. Previously, I worked on multi-agent reinforcement learning and generative modeling for autonomous driving and sustainable transportation.

I have also spent time doing research at NVIDIA and Toyota North America, and software engineering at WSO2, PickMe, and Trancite24. Before graduate school, I was a part of Mobility, Algorithms, and Society Lab at Cornell University and Data Science, Engineering & Analytics Research Hub of University of Moratuwa.

Resume  |  Google Scholar  |  LinkedIn  |  Github  |  Blog

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News
July 2025 I started as a Research Scientist at Toyota Research Institute.
June 2025 I defeneded my PhD on learning to tackle task variations in control: a transportation context.
May 2025 Our recent ICLR paper on benchmarking RL generalization is featured in MIT News.
Apr 2025 IntersectionZoo was accepted at ICLR 2025.
Apr 2025 "Mitigating Metropolitan Carbon Emissions with Dynamic Eco-driving at Scale" was accepted at TR-C.
Nov 2024 Our recent NeurIPS paper on model-based transfer learning is featured in MIT News .
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Research

For a complete list of publications, please visit my Google Scholar page.


In Review

Multi-residual Mixture of Experts Learning for Cooperative Control in Multi-vehicle Systems
Vindula Jayawardana, Sirui Li, Yashar Farid, Kentaro Oguchi, Cathy Wu
In review 2025
Noise-Aware Generative Microscopic Traffic Simulation
Vindula Jayawardana, Catherine Tang, Junyi Ji, Jonah Philion, Xue Bin Peng, Cathy Wu
In review 2025

Publications

IntersectionZoo: Eco-driving for Benchmarking Multi-Agent Contextual Reinforcement Learning
Vindula Jayawardana, Baptiste Freydt, Ao Qu, Cameron Hickert, Zhongxia Yan, Cathy Wu
ICLR 2025 International Conference on Learning Representations 2025
code | project page |
Media: MIT News
Model-Based Transfer Learning for Contextual Reinforcement Learning
JungHoon Cho, Vindula Jayawardana, Sirui Li, Cathy Wu
NeurIPS 2024Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 2024
Also at European Workshop on Reinforcement Learning 2024
project page | arXiv | code | OpenReview |
Media: MIT News
Mitigating Metropolitan Carbon Emissions with Dynamic Eco-driving at Scale
Vindula Jayawardana, Baptiste Freydt, Ao Qu, Cameron Hickert, Edgar Sanchez, Catherine Tang, Mark Tylor, Blaine Leonard, Cathy Wu
TR-C 2025 Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies 2024
Also at Conference in Emerging Technologies in Transportation Systems 2024 project page | arXiv |
Generalizing Cooperative Eco-driving via Multi-residual Task Learning
Vindula Jayawardana, Sirui Li, Cathy Wu, Yashar Farid, Kentaro Oguchi
ICRA 2024 International Conference on Robotics and Automation 2024
Also at Generalization in Planning workshop at NeurIPS 2023
Also at Machine Learning for Autonomous Driving Symposium 2023
project page | arXiv | poster | slides | video |
Learning-Augmented Vehicle Dispatching with Slack Times for High-Capacity Ride-Pooling
Youngseo Kim, Vindula Jayawardana, Samitha Samaranayake
TR-C 2024 Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies 2024 (major revision)
arXiv |
The Impact of Task Underspecification in Evaluating Deep Reinforcement Learning
Vindula Jayawardana, Catherine Tang, Sirui Li, Dajiang Suo, Cathy Wu
NeurIPS 2022 Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 2022
project page | arXiv | video | poster | slides |
Model-free Learning of Corridor Clearance: A Near-term Deployment Perspective
Vindula Jayawardana*, Dajiang Suo*, Cathy Wu (* equal contribution)
T-ITS 2023 IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems (T-ITS) 2023
arXiv |
Learning Eco-Driving Strategies at Signalized Intersections (MIT Homepage Spotlight)
Vindula Jayawardana, Cathy Wu,
ECC 2022 European Control Conference 2022
Also at Robotics for Climate Change at ICRA 2022
project page | arXiv | video | poster | slides |
Multi-behavior Learning for Socially Compatible Autonomous Driving
Sanjula Jayawardana, Vindula Jayawardana*, Kaneeka Vidanage, Cathy Wu* (* equal supervision)
ITSC 2023 IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Conference 2023
paper | poster |
The Braess Paradox in Dynamic Traffic
Dingyi Zhuang*, Yushu Huang*, Vindula Jayawardana, Jinhua Zhao, Dajiang Suo, Cathy Wu
ITSC 2022 IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Conference 2022
arXiv |
Mixed Autonomous Supervision in Traffic Signal Control
Vindula Jayawardana, Anna Landler, Cathy Wu
ITSC 2021 IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Conference 2021
paper |
Fleet Management for Ride-Pooling with Meeting Points at Scale: A Case Study in the Five Boroughs of New York City
Motahare Mounesan, Vindula Jayawardana, Yaocheng Wu, Samitha Samaranayake, Huy T. Vo
arXiv | code |
Word Vector Embeddings and Domain Specific Semantic-based Semi-supervised Ontology Instance Population
Vindula Jayawardana, Dimuthu Kariyawasam, Nisansa de Silva, Shehan Perera Keet Sugathadasa, Buddhi Ayesha, Madhavi Perera
ICTer 2017 International Journal on Advances in ICT for Emerging Regions 2017
Seventeenth International Conference on Advances in ICT for Emerging Regions 2017
paper |
Deriving a Representative Vector for Ontology Classes with Instance Word Vector Embeddings
Vindula Jayawardana, Dimuthu Kariyawasam, Nisansa de Silva, Shehan Perera Keet Sugathadasa, Buddhi Ayesha,
INTECH 2017 Seventh International Conference on Innovative Computing Technology 2017
paper |
Legal Document Retrieval using Document Vector Embeddings and Deep Learning
Keet Sugathadasa, Buddhi Ayesha, Nisansa de Silva, Shehan Perera Vindula Jayawardana, Dimuthu Kariyawasam, Madhavi Perera
CC 2017 Computing Conference 2017
arXiv |
Synergistic Union of Word2vec and Lexicon for Domain Specific Semantic Similarity
Keet Sugathadasa, Buddhi Ayesha, Nisansa de Silva, Shehan Perera Vindula Jayawardana, Dimuthu Kariyawasam, Madhavi Perera
ICIIS 2017 IEEE International Conference on Industrial and Information Systems 2017
paper |
Selected Open Source Contributions
IntersectionZoo: Benchmarking Contextual Reinforcement Learning (60 stars) - Main contributor
Charon: SCIM 2.0 Open Source Implementation (127 stars, 169 folks on Github) - Main contributor
SCIM 2.0 Compliance Test Suite (27 stars, 22 folks on Github) - Main contributor
Open Ridepool Simulator - Co-main contributor
Selected Awards
Rising Star in Cyber-Physical Systems research (NSF and University of Virginia)
IEEE ITSS WiE/YP Fellowship 2024 (IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society)
Harold L. Hazen Teaching Award 2022 (EECS MIT)
Digital Mobility Solutions Lanka Fellowship 2018 (University of Moratuwa)
Migara Ranathunga Trust Award 2018 (Institute of Engineers Sri Lanka)
Gold Award at National Best Quality ICT Awards 2017 (Sri Lanka Sector of British Computer Society)
Global Finalist in NASA International Space Apps 2017 (NASA)
Silver Medal at Junior Science Olympiad Sri Lanka 2010 (Sri Lankan Junior Science Olympiad)
Service
Workshop Organizer AVAS (RSS)
Conference Reviewer NeurIPS, ICML, AAAI, ICRA, ITSC, NLDL, TRC30, TRB, MERCon
Journal Reviewer T-RO, T-NNLS, T-IST, Physica A
Workshop Reviewer CCAI (NeurIPS), WMLMDS (AAAI), R2HCAI (AAAI)
Students Mentored
Graduate Students Jessica Ding (MIT - M.Eng Student 2024), Baptiste Freydt (ETH Zurich - MS Student 2022)
Undergraduate Students Catherine Tang (MIT-UROP 2022, 2024), Sanjula Jayawardana (University of Westminster 2023), Anirudh Valiveru (MIT-UROP 2022), Jiaxin He (Vanderbilt University 2022), Sunera Chandrasiri (University of Moratuwa 2022), Ammar Fayad (MIT-UROP 2021), Anna Landler (MIT-SuperUROP 2021)
Teaching
1.041/1.200/11.544: Transportation Systems Modeling: Teaching Assistant, MIT, Fall 2020/2021.
CS4622: Machine Learning: Teaching Assistant, UoM, Spring 2019.
CS2022: Data Structures and Algorithms: Instructor, UoM, Spring 2019.
CS3042: Database Systems: Teaching Assistant, UoM, Fall 2018.
CS2052: Computer Architecture: Teaching Assistant, UoM, Fall 2018.
CS2062: Object Oriented Software Development: Teaching Assistant, UoM, Spring 2018.
CS3962: Research and Report Writing : Teaching Assistant, UoM, Spring 2018.

Template adapted from 1 and 2.