Ajani De Vas Gunasekara

Hello there!

I am a final year PhD student in the Discrete Mathematics Research Group at Monash University, Australia (Thesis has been submitted for examination). My supervisor is Daniel Horsley. I'm also working in the capacity of a teaching associate at Monash University.

I obtained my master's degree in mathematics from the University of Central Florida, USA, and I received the mathematics master's thesis award for my research project. Furthermore, I worked as a teaching assistant in the school of mathematics while I was engaged in my studies.

I received my bachelor's degree (specialized in mathematics) from the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka with a GPA of 3.93/4.00, and I was a recipient of an academic excellence award and a colours awardee for chess. Right after graduating, I had the opportunity to work as a teaching assistant and then a lecturer in the mathematics department.

Research Interests:

• Combinatorial designs

• Graph decomposition problems

• Graph colouring problems

• Divisor theory of graphs

• Mathematics education

Selected Publications:

• A. De Vas Gunasekara and D. Horsley, Smaller embeddings of partial k-star decompositions, arXiv:2109.13475v1 (2021).

• A. De Vas Gunasekara and D. Horsley, An Evans-style result for block designs, SIAM J. Discrete Math. (2022), 47-63.

• D. Bryant, A. De Vas Gunasekara and D. Horsley, On determining when small embeddings of partial Steiner triple systems exist, J. Combin. Des. (2020), 568--579.

• A. De Vas Gunasekara, Weierstrass Vertices and Divisor Theory of Graphs (2018), Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 6248., https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd/6248.

Conferences:

• 43rd Australasian Combinatorics Conference, The University of Melbourne, Australia (December 2021)

• 64th Aust Ms meeting, The University of New England, Australia (December 2020)

• 42nd Australasian Conference on Combinatorial Mathematics and Combinatorial Computing, UNSW Sydney, Australia (December 2019)

• 63rd Aust Ms meeting, Monash University, Australia (December 2019)

Outreach and services:

• Appointed as a session chair and mentor for the International conference of undergraduate research (September 2021).

• I was a mathematics graduate student representative for the faculty of science in 2020.

• I co-organized the 2020 Australasian Graduate Symposium in Combinatorics.

Contact:

Email: ajani DOT gunasekara AT gmail DOT com