Charitha Abeyrathne received his B.Sc. in electrical engineering from the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, in January 2018. He joined the McMaster Automotive Resource Centre (MARC) in fall 2022, to pursue a M.A.Sc. in electrical engineering under the supervision of Dr. Berker Bilgin. Charitha’s research interests are primarily focused on the control of electrical machines and power electronics, within the context of automotive applications.
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Since his childhood, Charitha Abeyrathne has always had a passion for engineering and innovations. In fact, his dream was to work with cutting-edge technology. To achieve this dream, he completed numerous examinations and received merit-based admission to the University of Moratuwa.
At the University of Moratuwa, Charitha’s passion for electrical engineering grew. He decided to focus on power electronics and electrical machines, in the electrical field, for his bachelor’s degree in engineering. During this four-year program, he was able to contribute to numerous research projects.
In his final year, he led a team of undergraduates (under the supervision of Professor J.P. Karunadasa) in a research project that entailed the modelling of electrical machines. The focus of this project was “Investigating the effects of a load-injected DC, on the operation of transformers and utility system”. For part of the project, the team created a novel three-phase transformer model in the Simulink platform that functions based on transformer-specific test data. Charitha was able to complete the research project successfully, by verifying the model results with actual data. Results were published as a conference paper on IEEE Explore. The research project also won the “Eng. E.W. Karunarathna award” from the Institute of Engineers Sri Lanka, for Sri Lanka’s best undergraduate engineering research project of 2018.
Charitha graduated from the University of Moratuwa in 2018. He then started his career as a testing and commissioning engineer for LTL Global. LTL Global is a leading engineering company for thermal power plants, in the South Asia region. Charitha was mainly responsible for power systems simulations, and the testing and commissioning of all electrical systems within the power plant periphery. He was able to work on projects in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka while also travelling to numerous other countries to supervise the testing of high-end electrical systems.
After his short career of four and half years, Charitha joined McMaster University to continue his higher studies.
