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Zahmeeth Sakkaff
Graduate Student
Department of Computer Science & Engineering
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Lincoln, NE, 68508

Office: 114AA Schorr Center
Phone: (402) 413-1348
Email: zsayedsa at cse.unl.edu

Zahmeeth Sakkaff was born in Sri Lanka, a beautiful island known as the pearl of the Indian Ocean. Currently, she is pursuing her PhD degree at the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She joined Molecular and Biochemical Telecommunications (MBiTe) Lab as a Research Assistant in the spring of 2014 and started working under the guidance of Prof. Massimiliano Pierobon, in a research project supported by NFS EAGER grant titled “Telepathy: Telecommunication Systems Modeling and Engineering of Cell Communication Pathways.

From years 2006 – 2013, she worked as Research Assistant (Grade –I) in the Artificial Intelligence and Applied Electronics Research Unit at the National Institute of Fundamental Studies (NIFS) Sri Lanka. She engaged with the Brain Computer Interface (BCI) research group, at this institution under the supervision of Prof. Asiri Nanayakka and completed her Master of Philosophy (M.Phil) Degree in Computer Science at the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka in year 2010. The title of her M.Phil thesis was "Brain Computer Interface (BCI) based on Electroencephalographic (EEG) patterns due to new cognitive tasks".

She received the Bachelor of Science degree majoring in Computer Science and Chemistry at the Open University of Sri Lanka in 2005. She joined and served as a Demonstrator (Teaching Assistantship) at the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at the Open University of Sri Lanka. She worked at the same institution nearly two and a half years as a Visiting Academic and taught Computer Science and Chemistry for the 3rd (Junior) and 4th (Senior) year undergraduates.

Selected Publications
  • M. Pierobon and Z. Sakkaff, “An Mutual Information Upper Bound of Molecular Communication Based on Cell Metabolism,” 17th IEEE International workshop on Signal Processing advances in Wireless Communication (SPAWC)- Edinburgh, UK, accepted and will be presented in July 3-6, 2016
  • Zahmeeth Sakkaff and Asiri Nanayakkara, "Determination of Optimal Frequency Ranges Using Common Spatial Pattern Images," IEEE 8th International Conference on Industrial & Information Systems (ICIIS), 2013, pp. 133 - 138, 2013
  • A. Nanayakkara and Z. Sakkaff, “Fixed distance neighbour classifier in brain computer interface systems,” J.Natn.Sci.Foundation Sri Lanka, 40(3): pp. 195-200, 2012
  • Z. Sakkaff, A. Nanayakkara, “New set of cognitive tasks in EEG based Brain Computer Interface,” Conference Proc. 5th Int. IEEE Conf. ICIAFs, pp. 70 – 74, 2010
  • A. Nanayakkara, Z. Sakkaff, “Automated dimensionality reduction in EEG based Brain Computer Interface,” Conference Proc. 5th Int. IEEE Conf. ICIAFs., pp. 87–90, 2010