Thilanka Munasinghe is a lecturer at Information Technology & Web Science (ITWS) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) focusing on teaching areas related to Data Science, Data Analytics, and Informatics. Prior to joining RPI, Thilanka was the CodeLab instructor at West Virginia University’s LaunchLab, where he was instrumental in providing technical expertise and mentorship to student entrepreneurs of early-stage student-initiated start-ups. Thilanka has also contributed to large-scale open-source software projects such as MIT App Inventor. Thilanka received his BSc in Aerospace Engineering and MSc in Mechanical Engineering from West Virginia University and has conducted research on microgravity systems and genetic algorithms. Thilanka’s current research interests are in data-driven analytics using big data to address societal challenges in a diverse set of areas such as multi-disciplinary engineering applications, energy systems, urbanization, social networks, and health issues that impact society by building novel early warning systems and Internet of Things (IoT) applications.