An Interview with Prof. Roshan Ragel – 2025 IEEE CS Mary Kenneth Keller Teaching Award Recipient
As the first academic from the Global South to win the IEEE CS Mary Kenneth Keller Computer Science & Engineering Undergraduate Teaching Award, Prof. Roshan Ragel exemplifies leadership in teaching, research, and digital transformation. A Professor of Computer Engineering at the University of Peradeniya and Consultant CEO of LEARN, Sri Lanka’s National Research and Education Network, he has spearheaded efforts in AI policy, regional connectivity, and multidisciplinary academic innovation. We connected with Prof. Ragel to explore his impactful journey.
As the consulting CEO of LEARN, you’ve led significant enhancements to Sri Lanka’s education network. What were the key challenges and successes?
I’ve had the privilege of guiding LEARN since 2017, tackling obstacles like outdated infrastructure, fragmented policies, and limited national coordination. Many universities initially relied on isolated, ad‑hoc internet services. We focused on unifying standards, securing funding, and building stakeholder trust.
A critical test came in early 2020, when COVID‑19 forced rapid shifts to online learning. Fortunately, LEARN already ran pilot platforms, Zoom and Moodle, through workshops we held in 2019. When the lockdown began, we scaled quickly: we paused the system for a week, stress‑tested it, and relaunched it across 50+ member institutions, supporting up to 12,000 simultaneous classes and over 300 million minutes of usage per month . To ease the data burden on students, we collaborated with the government and telecoms to enable zero-rated access, allowing students to connect from home and access classes at no cost. These moves ensured nearly 90% of university students remained connected during lockdown.
Post‑COVID, our goal has been to embed hybrid learning, where online and in‑person teaching co‑exist. Today, LEARN supports all 16 public universities and many other higher education and research institutions. We’ve built resilient systems for education continuity, capacity building through workshops, and policies that support both infrastructure and pedagogical change. That blend of network stability, technical capacity, and policy buy‑in remains our formula for success.
You’ve played a central role in the Asi@Connect project. How has this shaped digital infrastructure and education in Sri Lanka and the region?
I joined Asi@Connect from the very beginning as a governor, then as a co-chair of the Steering Committee since 2021, and I have been serving as Chair since 2023. In these roles, I’ve helped guide technical strategy and oversee capacity-building activities across 22 countries. Asi@Connect brought regional NREN backbone connectivity to Sri Lanka, enabling our universities to participate in earth observation, climate, and disaster-response research collaborations.
Under my leadership, we trained local network teams and significantly enhanced Sri Lanka’s presence in Asia-Pacific research consortia. Asi@Connect isn’t just infrastructure, it’s a partnership, blending EU funding with local ownership to advance education and research across the region.
How do you see AI shaping Sri Lanka’s future, especially with LEARN’s efforts and your initiatives like the AI Forum for Academics?
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