Signal Processing - intelligent information infrastructures for wireless communications and radar technology, parasitic antenna technology and analogue beamforming and precoding techniques,  adaptive, cognitive (intelligent) and statistical signal processing techniques in a range of applications including Radar, Lidar, Sonar and RF networks, Network Coding, Cognitive Radio, MIMO signal processing, satellite communications and underwater communications.   

Prof. Sellathurai has 5 years of industrial research experience. She held positions with Bell-Laboratories, New Jersey, USA, as a visiting researcher (2000); and with the Canadian (Government) Communications Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada, as a Senior Research Scientist (2001-2004). Since August 2004, she has been in academia.  She held an honorary Adjunct/Associate Professorship at McMaster University, Ontario, Canada, between 2009 and 2013. She has been with Heriot-Watt University since 2012 and has been the head of EECE between 2015 and 2019, and Dean of Science and Engineering between 2020 and 2024.

Professor Sellathurai has published more than 250 peer-reviewed papers in leading international journals and conferences, along with two research monographs. Her current research focuses on the application of machine learning and statistical signal processing to wireless communications, radar, assistive care technologies, robotics, and hearing aids. Her contributions have been recognised with numerous awards, including the IEEE Communications Society Women in Engineering Mentorship Award (2022), the Fred W. Ellersick Best Paper Award (2005), the Industry Canada Public Service Award (2005), and the Technology Transfer Awards (2004). She also received the NSERC Doctoral Award for her Ph.D. dissertation.

Her present research can be found at https://spcom.site.hw.ac.uk/. She has been presently funded by EPSRC and DSTI:  COG-MHEAR: Towards cognitively-inspired 5G-IoT enabled, multi-modal Hearing Aids (https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=EP%2FT021063%2F1),  Platform Driving The Ultimate Connectivity (https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=EP%2FX04047X%2F2), and TITAN Extension (https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=EP%2FY037243%2F1). Her full grant history can be found at (UKRI Grant website)

She was previously funded by DSTL (http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/drupal/udrc/people/edinburgh-consortium/dr-mathini-sellathurai). The research group is also involved in European Union Framework 7  projects, Cognitive radio-oriented wireless and interference.  She has also been funded by industries QinetiQ and Wireless Fiber Systems to work on MIMO RADAR and underwater communications;  EPSRC under EP/D07827X/1 for advanced signal processing techniques for multi-user multiple-input multiple-output broadband wireless communications; MIMO-RADAR and waveform agility to improve low elevation target detection (also partially supported by QinetiQ, Portsmouth); EP/G026092/1 for Bridging the gap between design and implementation of soft-detectors for Turbo-MIMO wireless systems and EP/H012257/1 for Signal Processing Techniques to Reduce the Clutter Competition in Forward Looking Radar.

She served as an Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing from 2009 to 2018, was General Chair of the IEEE Signal Processing Advances in Wireless Communications (SPAWC) conference in 2016 and was a member of the IEEE Signal Processing for Communications and Networking (SPCOM) Technical Committee from 2014 to 2019. In addition to her technical contributions, Professor Sellathurai is a member of the IEEE History Committee and serves on the Strategic Advisory Team of the UK Research Councils. She is also an invited Fellow of the Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association (AAIA), an Invited Fellow of the International Artificial Intelligence Industry Alliance (FAIIA) , and the Women’s Engineering Society (WES), U.K.

She delivered many keynotes including a keynote in  2024 IEEE International Conference on Signal Processing, Information, Communication and Systems (SPICSCON) (https://spicscon.org/2024/) panelist at Optics, Photonics, Imaging, & Wireless AT&T 100 Years of Research & Innovation: Careers in Technology (https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/497179), India Mobile Congress (https://event.bharat6galliance.com/95/website/Agenda) and WICE panel at ICC 2025 (https://icc2025.ieee-icc.org/program/women-communications-engineering-wice-program-icc-2025) and WCNC (https://wcnc2025.ieee-wcnc.org/panels#p6)

Prof. Sellathurai was an organizer for the IEEE International Workshop on Cognitive Wireless Systems, IIT Delhi, India, 2009, 2010, and 2013, and the IEEE WCNC 2013 - WORKSHOP - New Advances for Physical Layer Network Coding, 2013, Shanghai, China.. She has been a Technical Program Committee member for the IEEE International Conference of Communications from 2004 to present and was a National publicity Champion for ICC 2013, Budapest.  

NSERC Prize Interview

Comsoc Prize

Wikipedia Entry

Research News Cogmhear project Heriot-Watt University

Signal Processing, MIMO Wireless Communications, Radar Signal Processing, Cognitive Radar, Cognitive Radion, Interference Channels, Parasitic Antennas, Precoding, Turbo Coding, Iterative receiver design, beamformer designs, STAP

Research Role: Head of  the Signal Processing for Intelligent Systems and Communications Lab (EM 3.24)

Teaching Role: Introduction to Electrical Engineering and Circuits (B37EA1) for Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Robotics Engineering and Physics Students from First Year

Image Processing (4th year MENG (EE) and MSc in Wireless Communications Students)

Advanced Image Analysis (Vision Image  & Robotics MSc students (http://www.postgraduate.hw.ac.uk/prog/311/))