Indika Walimuni, Ph.D.

Hi... my name is Indika Walimuni, an instructor at the City College of San Francisco, department of Computer Science. I started my teaching career at CCSF in Spring 2017. I teach both Computer Science and Physics. At CS department, I teach programing classes related to Java, C++ and Python. I also teach CS at Merritt college and work as a mentor in CTI program at California State University Monterey Bay (CSUMB).

I studied both Physics and Computer Science in my bachelors and graduated with BS degree with honors in 2002 from the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, one of the most beautiful universities in the world!. In 2003, I was awarded a fellowship to study Physics at the University of Houston, Texas. In 2008, I earned my PhD in Physics from the University of Houston.

My PhD research was very exciting!. The entire research was done in front of a computer!. I simulated a head and a CT scanner model to acquire my own CT data that was subsequently used in my PhD research. This is where I became more interested in programming too. Upon graduation, I worked as a diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) postdoctoral research scientist at the University of Texas Health Science center in Houston (UTHealth) for 2 years. This is where I published a lot and wrote awful lot of C and MatLab programs.

I followed my wife and moved to California in 2011. This time, I lost my legal right to work in the USA. While applying for jobs, I took the opportunity to learn myself new technologies. I took several MOOC classes to learn and earned certificates in Python programming, GitHub, Machine Learning, Databases, and R programming during 2011-2013. Before joining CCSF, I worked 4 years in software industry in bay area first as a software engineer intern and then as a program manager. My software engineer intern interview was a small project. I was given one week to create a guest book web application linked.  You can still try it out but may not work as Google removed free quota and started collecting money for usage. It is based on Java server pages and utilizes Google account API to sign in. In 2015, I became a technical program manager in a mobile and web development company. That interview also was project based. There, I created an iPhone app capable of location based timecard signing for mobile employees. The app facilitates the signing of the timecard only when the mobile employes reach the designated location; the app implemented iPhone drawing API(s) for signing and Map API(s) for tracking location. 

I always loved teaching. During my industry career, my desire to teach grew by the day. In 2017, I changed career from industry to academia and became a teacher at CCSF. Back in 2019 I was fortunate to be selected by CCSF to pursue the Certificate in Effective College Instruction by The Association of College and University Educators (ACUE) and American Council on Education (ACE) in which I learned a variety of techniques on effective instruction. The thing I love the most in teaching is the mentoring comes with it. Of course you learn a lot too. Teaching is the one of the few fulfilling career. When it comes to teaching, I consider myself as a good guide not only for the subject but also for the career. Follow me and I guarantee you will succeed. You can access my most recent CCSF department of computer science evaluation here.

I am passionate about giving away my time. You will notice this throughout my classes too. I also passionate about gardening. Gardening is giving me a sense of relief especially during the pandemic. Here are few of my recent gardening successes. I also like DIY, traveling and watching documentaries specially related to science and investigative journalism. I am a member and a big fan of PBS. In particular I like programs like NOVA, NATURE, and FRONTLINE.

This is just a bit of me. Growing up in an extremely poor country in extremely poor family, a good education and hard work opened the pathway to success for me. I have an inspiring story to tell and I am happy to share it with you. What is yours ? I am delighted to listen to it.