Darshika G. Perera, PhD, SMIEEE
Associate Professor
AEC-308, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering,
University of Colorado Colorado Springs
1420 Austin Bluffs Parkway,
Colorado Springs, CO 80918, USA
Tel: 719-255-3404
email: dperera(at)uccs.edu or darshika.perera(at)uccs.edu
websites: https://www.darshikagperera.com/
More information about my research, teaching, and services can be found on the following tabs/links.
Our Research Page is updated with current research projects in January 2023.
Our IEEE Student Branch Activities is moved to a new web page (from my main page) from June 2024.
Our Conference Participation is moved to a new web page (from my main page) from January 2025.
I received my Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada, and the M.Sc. and B.Sc. degrees from Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden) and University of Peradeniya (Sri Lanka) respectively, both in Electrical Engineering. I am an Associated Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at University of Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS). I joined the ECE Department as an Assistant Professor in Fall semester of 2014. I got my Tenure and Promotion to Associated Professor at UCCS in June 2021. I am also an Adjunct Professor at the University of Victoria, Canada. My niche areas of research and interests lie in embedded systems, digital design, and reconfigurable computing. Please see my research page for detailed description of my research projects.
Prior to joining UCCS, I worked as the Senior Engineer and Group Leader of Embedded Systems at CMC Microsystems, Canada, and led several collaborative R&D projects in Embedded Systems and Wireless Sensor Networks domains. I am a Senior IEEE member and serve on organizing and program committees for several IEEE/ACM conferences and workshops, and also serve as a reviewer for the IEEE, Springer, and Elsevier journals. Furthermore, I am serving as the Associated Editor for Elsevier Microelectronics Journal (MEJ), Editor for the Elsevier Microprocessors and Microsystems Journal (MICPRO), Editor for the Elsevier IoT Journal , and serving on the VLSI Systems and Application Technical Committee (VSATC) of IEEE Circuits and Systems Society.
In 2025
Two of our papers are accepted to the IEEE Mid-West Symposium on Circuits and Systems (MWCAS'25). I will be in Lansing, Michigan to present these papers in early August. I am looking forward to meeting fellow CAS members at the conference. The titles of our papers are: 1) FPGA-based Hardware Accelerator for Bottleneck Residual Blocks of MobileNetV2 Convolutional Neural Networks. 2) High-Level Synthesis Based FPGA Accelerator for GPS Signal Image Feature Extraction
We attended the IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS'25) in London, UK in late May 2025, to present our paper titled "FPGA-Based Hardware Architecture for Sequence Alignment by Genetic Algorithm". It was very nice to meet the fellow CAS members at the conference. Congratulations to all my current/former students, who co-authored this paper; and to my collaborator from CU Anschutz medical campus, Dr. Johannes Menzel, who co-authored this paper and presented it with me at the conference. (See pictures below).
Our research on "FPGA-based battery management systems (BMS) for physics-based model predictive controller for Electric and Hybrid Vehicles" is featured and highlighted in UCCS Communique Newsletter. This work was done with my former PhD student Anne Madsen, who is currently working at Space Force. Link to this news article.
In 2024
Our CU (University of Colorado) President (Todd Saliman) visited my research lab in our new Anschutz Engineering Building at UCCS, on 11th December 2024. We (three of my PhD students and I) explained some of our research projects to him. (See pictures below).
Another one of my M.Sc. Thesis students, Josh Vernon, successfully defended his Masters Thesis on 12th December 2024. Title of the Thesis is "Matched Bandwidth Detection: Background, Modeling, and Implementation". (See picture below).
I have been selected for the "Faculty Leadership Development Program (FLDA)" for 2024-2025 cohort at University of Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS). I am honored to participate in this program, which will indeed help me to achieve my future academic career goals, while honing my leadership skills. We had our retreat in the first week of September 2024. It was very nice to meet other faculty from various departments at UCCS. I had a wonderful time, and am looking forward to all the future events. I must thank our provost Dr. Lynn Vidler for organizing this at UCCS. (See picture below).
Our journal papers on novel computational models for edge computing is published in the IEEE Access, open access journal (I.F. 3.9). The title is "Composing Efficient Computational Models for Real-Time Processing on Next-Generation Edge-Computing Platforms". This project is funded by NSF. This is with my current PhD student Mokhles Mohsin and former PhD student Dr. Navid Shahrouzi.
In 2023
I am delighted to share this wonderful news! I received the "Teacher of the Year - Tenured Award (2022-2023)" from Engineering and Applied Science (EAS) College during the award ceremony in October 2023. I am truly honored to receive this award. I want to thank my ECE Chair for nominating me for this award, my colleagues, and my students for giving me excellent recommendations, and the UCCS community for their continuing support. This award is in recognition for my contributions and my passion for teaching and attracting and mentoring both graduate and undergraduate students. This is indeed rewarding and motivates me to make more contributions to our university. (see more pictures below).
I am delighted to share this wonderful news!! I have been selected for the "Excellence in Leadership Program (ELP)" for 2023-2024 cohort within the University of Colorado (CU) system, comprising four campuses. I am honored to participate in this program, which will indeed help me to achieve my future academic career goals, while honing my leadership skills. I must thank my colleague Dr. Scott Trimboli for nominating me for this opportunity. We are on UCCS news. (see more pictures below).
Please take a look at Our Current Research Projects in our research group/lab. I updated this in January 2023.
In 2022
Wonderful news!! I have been selected as the recipient of the Outstanding Teacher Award for 2022 at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS). I am truly honored to receive this one-time Prestigious Award. I want to thank my ECE Chair for nominating me for this award, my colleagues and my students for giving me excellent recommendations, Campus Award Committee for selecting me for this award, and the UCCS community for their continuing support. It is indeed rewarding to receive this esteemed award as a recognition for my contributions and my passion for teaching, attracting, and mentoring students. I am looking forward to making more contributions to UCCS in the future. (See pictures below).
In 2021
Ending the Year 2021 with a Bang!! More wonderful news before the year ends!! I received funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for my project on "An Efficient and Adaptive Framework for Real-Time Processing on Next-Gen Edge-Computing Platforms" starting from January 2022. This project is built on my embedded/digital systems expertise in several application domains, including data analytics, control systems, cybersecurity, and machine learning. I am delighted to secure funding for this project, since I am very passionate about this area and hoping to make significant contributions in the near future.
Wonderful news!! I got my Tenure and Promotion to Associate Professor in the ECE Department at University of Colorado Colorado Spring (UCCS). It is indeed rewarding to pass this milestone, which will allow me to continue my passion for teaching, doing research, and services. I want to thank the UCCS community, my reviewers, my mentors, colleagues, and collaborators for their continuing support. I want to especially thank my former graduate students (4 PhD and 9 Masters students, thus far), whose excellent performance led to many outstanding publications and successful graduations, which immensely helped my tenure process. I also want to thank my family, who has been supporting and making many compromises to achieve my goals. I am certainly looking forward to making more contributions to UCCS and to my research community, while achieving many more milestones in the future.
Our research on "Highly Adaptive Architectures for Edge Computing" is featured in our UCCS Communique News. Link to this news article.
In 2020
I officially started collaborating with Jump Trading LLC Company, from August 2020.
We attended the IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS'25) in London, UK in late May 2025, to present our paper titled "FPGA-Based Hardware Architecture for Sequence Alignment by Genetic Algorithm". It was very nice to meet the fellow CAS members at the conference. Congratulations to all my current/former students, who co-authored this paper; and to my collaborator from CU Anschutz medical campus, Dr. Johannes Menzel, who co-authored this paper and presented it with me at the conference. (See pictures below). More pictures of our conference participation.
Our last day of "Faculty Leadership Development Program (FLDA)" for 2024-2025 cohort at University of Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS), 9th May 2025. We received a certificate of completion. I really enjoyed meeting many fellow UCCS faculty, during the FLDA sessions. It was my pleasure participating in the FLDA program, which enabled me to learn many leadership skills, which I will be utilizing throughout my academic career, as an educator, mentor, researcher, and also as a leader. I am excited to seek more professional/career development opportunities like this, that would help me in the long term. (See pictures below).
We organized an "IEEE Grip and Greet Event" to celebrate the graduating ECE students at UCCS in Spring 2025 on 8th May 2025, together with IEEE Pikes Peak Local Chapter and IEEE UCCS Student Branch Club. (See pictures below). More pictures of our IEEE Student Branch Events
Our CU (University of Colorado) President (Todd Saliman) visited my research lab in our new Anschutz Engineering Building at UCCS, on 11th December 2024. We (three of my PhD students and I) explained some of our research projects to him. (See pictures below).
Another one of my M.Sc. Thesis students, Josh Vernon, successfully defended his Masters Thesis on 12th December 2024. Title of the Thesis is "Matched Bandwidth Detection: Background, Modeling, and Implementation". (See picture below). More pictures on my students
I have been selected for the "Faculty Leadership Development Program (FLDA)" for 2024-2025 cohort at University of Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS). I am honored to participate in this program, which will indeed help me to achieve my future academic career goals, while honing my leadership skills. This was at the retreat in the first week of September 2024. It was very nice to meet other faculty from various departments at UCCS. I had a wonderful time, and am looking forward to all the future events. I must thank our provost Dr. Lynn Vidler for organizing this at UCCS. (See picture below).
Our last day of "Excellence in Leadership Program (ELP)". We received a certificate of completion. This is a group photo with my UCCS colleagues. I really enjoyed meeting many fellow CU members from all four CU campuses, during the ELP sessions. I also had a chance to meet most of our CU leaderships teams from all four CU campuses. It was my pleasure participating in the ELP program, which enabled me to learn many leadership skills, which I will be utilizing throughout my academic career, as an educator, mentor, researcher, and also as a leader. I am excited to seek more professional/career development opportunities like this, that would help me in the long term. (see more pictures below).
Our visit to CU Denver (University of Colorado Denver), for the Excellence in Leadership Program (ELP) session, on Friday 19th April. This is during our campus walk, with some of our ELP 23-24 cohort members. It was great to see and connect with the CU fellow members from all four campuses. I must thank the ELP organizers for arranging excellent sessions for us at CU Denver. (see more pictures below).
Our visit to CU Boulder (University of Colorado Boulder), for the Excellence in Leadership Program (ELP) session, on 26th Janaury 2024. This is during our campus walk, with some of our ELP 23-24 cohort members. It was great to see and connect with everybody after the winter break. I must thank the ELP organizers for arranging excellent sessions for us at CU Boulder. (see more pictures below).
I was pleasantly surprised to receive this card from the CEO of ULA (United Launch Alliance). It is indeed rewarding to see and hear that my students are doing excellent work in the industry. (see more pictures below).
I am delighted share this wonderful news. I received the Teacher of the Year - Tenured Award 2022-203 at EAS (Engineering and Applied Science) Collage Award Ceremony in October 2023. (See pictures below).
I attended the Retreat for the "Excellence in Leadership Program (ELP)" for 2023-2024 cohort, on 10th and 11th August in Denver. These are the pictures with all the participants from all four campuses within the CU system. I had a wonderful time, and I am looking forward to all the future events. (see pictures below).
My Outstanding Teacher Award from University of Colorado Colorado Spring (UCCS) in 2022. (See pictures below).
It was my pleasure giving an invited talk during the "Digital Design" session at the International Conference on VLSI Design and Embedded Systems (VLSID'22). I must thank the Conference Organizers for inviting me. Title of my talk is "Composing FPGA-based architectures and techniques for compute and data-intensive applications on embedded platforms". (See picture below).
I gave a keynote speech at the IEEE Nordic Circuits and Systems (NorCAS'21) Conference in Oslo, Norway. Title of my talk is “Reconfigurable Hardware Architectures for Edge Computing”, which encompasses most of the embedded and digital systems work that I have been doing in several application domains, including data analytics, control systems, cybersecurity, and machine learning. I am very passionate about this area and hoping to make significant contributions in this area in the near future (See picture below).
I am delighted share this wonderful news. I received the Teacher of the Year Award - Tenure Track 2018-2019 at EAS (Engineering and Applied Science) Collage Award Ceremony in April 2019. Also, My PhD Student (Dr. Navid) received the Outstanding PhD Student Award 2018-2019 at the same Ceremony. (See pictures below).
I received my IEEE Senior Membership from October 2018.
I am delighted to share this wonderful news. We won the Best Poster Paper Award at the International Symposium on HEART (Highly Efficient Accelerators and Reconfigurable Technology) 2018 in Toronto, Canada (19th-22nd June). This paper with my MSc Student Mokhles Mohsin is titled "An FPGA-Based Hardware Accelerator for K-Nearest Neighbor Classification for Machine Learning on Mobile Devices". Just came back from Toronto (22nd June), after attending the conference and presenting the paper. See pictures here
Last updated on 19th June 2025