DrPasika Ranaweera

Dr Pasika Ranaweera is a Lecturer/Assistant Professor in the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at University College Dublin (UCD). He is Co-Director of the Network Softwarization and Security Labs (NetSLab) and a Research Fellow at the CONNECT Research Center. His research focuses on the security, intelligence, and optimization of 5G and 6G networks, particularly Open RAN, non-terrestrial and UAV-assisted networks, multi-access edge computing, federated learning, security orchestration, blockchain, privacy-preserving technologies, and lightweight and formally verified security protocols.

Dr Ranaweera received his PhD in Computer Science from UCD in 2023 for his research on improving the security of service migration in multi-access edge computing. He holds an MSc in Information and Communication Technology, specializing in Information Security, from the University of Agder, Norway, supported by the Norwegian Lånekassen Scholarship, and a BSc in Engineering (Honors) in Electrical and Information Engineering from the University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka.

Before joining the UCD School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering in September 2023, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher in the UCD School of Computer Science and Project Manager of the EU Horizon Europe SNS project CONFIDENTIAL-6G. He previously served as a Lecturer in the Department of Electrical and Information Engineering at the University of Ruhuna from 2013 to 2018.

Dr Ranaweera is a Co-Principal Investigator of the €780,000 UCD contribution to the EU Horizon Europe SNS project SHIELD-6G and the €284,100 UCD HEREG infrastructure grant. He has also secured contributions to the ENSURE-6G and COHERENT Marie Skłodowska-Curie Staff Exchange projects. His research combines theoretical advances with experimental validation through Open RAN, edge computing, UAV, and network-simulation platforms.

His scholarly work includes journal articles, conference papers, surveys, and book chapters on 5G/6G security, Open RAN, edge computing, blockchain, distributed intelligence, and network orchestration. He is a well-cited researcher, with a Google Scholar h-index of 19 as of July 2026. In recognition of the impact of his research, he received the Sri Lanka President’s Award for Scientific Research 2021. His other distinctions include a Best PhD Poster Award from the UCD School of Computer Science and recognition for a paper placed second in the IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine Best Paper Awards.

Dr Ranaweera has more than 12 years of university-level teaching experience across UCD, Beijing-Dublin International College in China, and the University of Ruhuna. At UCD and BDIC, he teaches and coordinates modules in wireless communications, digital communications, communication systems, circuits and systems, control theory, and professional engineering projects. He also supervises and co-supervises doctoral, master’s, and undergraduate researchers working on Open RAN, UAV-enabled networks, federated learning, edge intelligence, security orchestration, and blockchain.

He contributes to the wider research community as a reviewer and Technical Program Committee member for leading IEEE journals, conferences, and workshops, as well as for EU editorial. He is a member of IEEE, the IEEE Communications Society, the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society, ACM, the Irish Computer Society, and the Institution of Engineers Sri Lanka.