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Danushka Bollegala

Amazon Scholar, University of Liverpool

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Danushka is an Amazon Scholar, working with the Core Search NLP team in Tokyo, Japan. He is also a professor of natural language processing at the University of Liverpool, UK. His main research interests are representation learning, domain adaptation and natural language generation.

At Amazon, Danushka works on various problems related to information retrieval and natural-language processing such as document analysis, multilingual semantic representation learning and information propagation. After starting at Amazon, he has been amazed by the scale of datasets and ability to test his ideas at Amazon. He also loves the direct impact he can make upon millions of users who are using Amazon product search systems in multiple market places around the world.

"I am impressed to see that the well-known leadership principles are not just theoretical statements but are working principles that govern all aspects of operations at Amazon. In particular I like to “Think Big”, “Learn and be Curious” and “Invent and Simplify.” The emphasis on putting ideas into written documents prior to meetings is a practice that I have borrowed from Amazon into my own practice at the university."

The emphasis on putting ideas into written documents prior to meetings is a practice that I have borrowed from Amazon into my own practice at the university.
Danushka Bollegala, Amazon Scholar

As part of Amazon's Core NLP team in Japan, Danushka has found that “Tokyo is a vibrant city where many cultures co-exist and flourish. Among places that I have lived or worked, Tokyo comes to the top in terms of all aspects of life style such as food, safety and cleanliness. Outside Amazon, I enjoy spending time with my family. My wife and I are originally from Sri Lanka and enjoy spicy Sri Lankan curries."

Learn more about the Amazon Scholars program.

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