Vindula Jayawardana

Email : vindula [AT] mit [DOT] edu

I am a PhD student in computer science at MIT. I am fortunate to be advised by Prof. Cathy Wu in the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS). Earlier, I completed my bachelors at University of Moratuwa in Sri Lanka.

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. I have also spent time at WSO2, Autochatic, PickMe, and Trancite24.

I am interested in advancing the understanding of learning for control in large-scale cyber-physical systems from the lens of cities as robots. My research includes making reinforcement learning suitable for real-world problems with applications including learning for social good and tackling climate change. Currently, I am leading the project AlphaDrive at MIT.

Google Scholar | CV | LinkedIn | Github | Blog

Recent Updates

Our paper "An Invisible Issue of Task Underspecification in Deep Reinforcement Learning" was accepted at NeurIPS 2022.
Our recent work has been featured in National Public Radio (NPR) in The Loh Down on Science Podcast.
I am excited to receive 2022 Harold L. Hazen Teaching Award from EECS MIT.
Our paper "The Braess Paradox in Dynamic Traffic" was accepted at ITSC 2022.
I presented our recent eco-driving work at ICRA 2022.
Our recent work on eco-driving was featured as a spotlight on MIT front page.
Our paper "Reinforcement Learning for Eco-Lagrangian Control at Intersections" was accepted at Robotics for Climate Change at ICRA 2022.
I presented a poster at the MIT CEE Annual Research Day based on our recent work on learning eco-driving strategies at signalized intersections.
Our paper "Learning Eco-Driving Strategies at Signalized Intersections" was accepted at ECC 2022.
I gave an invited talk at Univerity of Moratuwa.
Our paper "Mixed Autonomous Supervision in Traffic Signal Control" was accepted at ITSC 2021.
Our paper "Fleet management for ride-pooling with meeting points at scale: a case study in the five boroughs of New York City" is now on arXiv.
I presented a poster at MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab Virtual Open House 2021.

Articles in Review

Learning Corridor Clearance for Emergency Vehicles Under Mixed Autonomy
Dajiang Suo*, Vindula Jayawardana*, Cathy Wu (* = equal contribution)

Path Clearance for Emergency Vehicles Under Mixed Autonomy: An Opportunity for Low Market Penetration CAVs
Dajiang Suo, Vindula Jayawardana, Cathy Wu

Mitigating The Braess’s Paradox in a Closed System Using Reinforcement Learning
Yuzhu Huang*, Dingyi Zhuang*, Vindula Jayawardana, Jinhua Zhao, Dajiang Suo, Cathy Wu

What is a Typical Signalized Intersection in a City?
Ao Qu*, Anirudh Valiveru*, Catherine Tang, Vindula Jayawardana, Baptiste Freydt, Cathy Wu

Publications

	An Invisible Issue of Task Underspecification in Deep Reinforcement Learning Vindula Jayawardana, Catherine Tang, Sirui Li, Dajiang Suo, Cathy Wu Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2022, To appear [Cite] × @INPROCEEDINGS{task_families_jayawardana, author={Jayawardana, Vindula and Tang, Catherine and Li, Sirui and Suo, Dajiang and Wu, Cathy}, booktitle={Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS)}, title={An Invisible Issue of Task Underspecification in Deep Reinforcement Learning}, year={2022}}
	Learning Eco-Driving Strategies at Signalized Intersections Vindula Jayawardana, Cathy Wu European Control Conference (ECC), 2022 International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2022. Robotics for Climate Change workshop, 2022 (Spotlight Talk) Press: On the road to cleaner, greener, and faster driving – MIT News Home page feature. Press: Perceptron: Risky teleoperation, Rocket League simulation and zoologist multiplication – Tech Crunch. Podcast: The Loh Down on Science Podcast - NPR. [Website] [Paper] [ICRA Presentation] [ICRA Poster] [ECC Video] [Cite] × @inproceedings{jayawardana2022, title={Reinforcement Learning for Eco-Lagrangian Control at Intersections}, author={Vindula Jayawardana and Cathy Wu}, booktitle={20th European Control Conference (ECC)}, year={2022}, }
	The Braess Paradox in Dynamic Traffic Dingyi Zhuang, Yuzhu Huang, Vindula Jayawardana, Jinhua Zhao, Dajiang Suo, Cathy Wu IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Conference (ITSC), 2022 [Paper] [Cite] × @INPROCEEDINGS{braess_paradox_zhuang, author={Zhuang, Dingyi and Huang, Yuzhu and Jayawardana, Vindula and Zhao, Jinhua and Suo, Dajiang and Wu, Cathy}, booktitle={2021 IEEE International Intelligent Transportation Systems Conference (ITSC)}, title={The Braess Paradox in Dynamic Traffic}, year={2021}}
	Mixed Autonomous Supervision in Traffic Signal Control Vindula Jayawardana, Anna Landler, Cathy Wu IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Conference (ITSC), 2021 [Paper] [Cite] × @INPROCEEDINGS{9565053, author={Jayawardana, Vindula and Landler, Anna and Wu, Cathy}, booktitle={2021 IEEE International Intelligent Transportation Systems Conference (ITSC)}, title={Mixed Autonomous Supervision in Traffic Signal Control}, year={2021}, volume={}, number={}, pages={1767-1773}, doi={10.1109/ITSC48978.2021.9565053}}
	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 To appear, 2021 [Paper] [Cite] × @misc{mounesan2021fleet, title={Fleet management for ride-pooling with meeting points at scale: a case study in the five boroughs of New York City}, author={Motahare Mounesan and Vindula Jayawardana and Yaocheng Wu and Samitha Samaranayake and Huy T. Vo}, year={2021}, eprint={2105.00994}, archivePrefix={arXiv}, primaryClass={eess.SY} }
	Deriving a Representative Vector for Ontology Classes with Instance Word Vector Embeddings Vindula Jayawardana, Dimuthu Lakmal, Nisansa de Silva, Amal Shehan Perera, Keet Sugathadasa, Buddhi Ayesha INTECH, 2017 [Paper] [Cite] × @article{Jayawardana2017DerivingAR, title={Deriving a representative vector for ontology classes with instance word vector embeddings}, author={Vindula Jayawardana and D. Lakmal and Nisansa de Silva and A. Perera and Keet Sugathadasa and Buddhi Ayesha}, journal={2017 Seventh International Conference on Innovative Computing Technology (INTECH)}, year={2017}, pages={79-84} }
	Semi-Supervised Instance Population of an Ontology using Word Vector Embeddings Vindula Jayawardana, Dimuthu Lakmal, Nisansa de Silva, Amal Shehan Perera, Keet Sugathadasa, Buddhi Ayesha ICTer, 2017 [Paper] [Cite] × @INPROCEEDINGS{8257822, author={Jayawardana, Vindula and Lakmal, Dimuthu and de Silva, Nisansa and Perera, Amal Shehan and Sugathadasa, Keet and Ayesha, Buddhi and Perera, Madhavi}, booktitle={2017 Seventeenth International Conference on Advances in ICT for Emerging Regions (ICTer)}, title={Semi-supervised instance population of an ontology using word vector embedding}, year={2017}, volume={}, number={}, pages={1-7}, doi={10.1109/ICTER.2017.8257822}}
	Synergistic Union of Word2Vec and Lexicon for Domain Specific Semantic Similarity Keet Sugathadasa, Buddhi Ayesha, Nisansa de Silva, Amal Shehan Perera, Vindula Jayawardana, Dimuthu Lakmal ICIIS, 2017 [Paper] [Cite] × @INPROCEEDINGS{8300343, author={Sugathadasa, Keet and Ayesha, Buddhi and de Silva, Nisansa and Perera, Amal Shehan and Jayawardana, Vindula and Lakmal, Dimuthu and Perera, Madhavi}, booktitle={2017 IEEE International Conference on Industrial and Information Systems (ICIIS)}, title={Synergistic union of Word2Vec and lexicon for domain specific semantic similarity}, year={2017}, volume={}, number={}, pages={1-6}, doi={10.1109/ICIINFS.2017.8300343}}
	Word Vector Embeddings and Domain Specific Semantic Similarity based Semi-Supervised Ontology Instance Population Vindula Jayawardana, Dimuthu Lakmal, Nisansa de Silva, Amal Shehan Perera, Keet Sugathadasa, Buddhi Ayesha ICTer Journal, 2018 [Paper] [Cite] × @article{Jayawardana2018WordVE, title={Word Vector Embeddings and Domain Specific Semantic based Semi-Supervised Ontology Instance Population}, author={Vindula Jayawardana and D. Lakmal and Nisansa de Silva and A. Perera and Keet Sugathadasa and Buddhi Ayesha and Madhavi Perera}, journal={International Journal on Advances in Ict for Emerging Regions (icter)}, year={2018}, volume={11}, pages={1} }
	Legal Document Retrieval Using Document Vector Embeddings and Deep Learning Keet Sugathadasa, Buddhi Ayesha, Nisansa de Silva, Amal Shehan Perera, Vindula Jayawardana, Dimuthu Lakmal SAI, 2018 [Paper] [Cite] × @InProceedings{Sugathadasa2019Legal, author="Sugathadasa, Keet and Ayesha, Buddhi and de Silva, Nisansa and Perera, Amal Shehan and Jayawardana, Vindula and Lakmal, Dimuthu and Perera, Madhavi", editor="Arai, Kohei and Kapoor, Supriya and Bhatia, Rahul", title="Legal Document Retrieval Using Document Vector Embeddings and Deep Learning", booktitle="Intelligent Computing", year="2019", publisher="Springer International Publishing", address="Cham", pages="160--175", isbn="978-3-030-01177-2" }
	Machine Learning Based Domain Specific Information Retrieval Accuracy Measuring System for Legal Domain Keet Sugathadasa, Vindula Jayawardana, Buddhi Ayesha, Nisansa de Silva, Amal Shehan Perera, Dimuthu Lakmal ICIIS, 2019 [Paper]