SLIIT’s Team Akura Wins Goldsmiths’ OneEarth AI Tool Building Challenge With an AI Platform to Teach Sinhala

SLIIT’s Team Akura Wins Goldsmiths’ OneEarth AI Tool Building Challenge With an AI Platform to Teach Sinhala

Team Akura from SLIIT. Image credit: Lanka Business News.

A final-year university project developed in Sri Lanka has earned international recognition for its thoughtful use of artificial intelligence in early childhood learning. Team Akura, a group of four students from the Faculty of Computing at the Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology (SLIIT), emerged as champions of the 2026 AI Tool Building Challenge on OneEarth, a virtual competition organised by the School of Computing at Goldsmiths, University of London.

The team (Mihiran Nanayakkara, Dinithi Piyathilaka, Dhuwindhu Rathnayake and Rahul Nanayakkara) designed a mobile, multimodal platform to support Sinhala learning among children aged three to six. Their achievement places a Sri Lankan student-led project among the international entries recognised for applying AI to a real-world educational challenge.

AI-generated illustration. The image is illustrative and does not depict the actual competition or student team.

A final-year project with a practical purpose

The OneEarth challenge invited participants to develop AI-driven responses to real-world needs. Team Akura’s entry addressed early learning and language education, building on the students’ fourth-year project at SLIIT.

The project was guided by mentor Dr Dinuka Wijendra, who supervised the team’s application to the competition. The students set out to create a learning resource that could make children’s exposure to digital screens more purposeful, with an emphasis on helping young learners engage with Sinhala.

That goal is particularly significant in a period when families and educators are weighing the benefits and limits of screen use among young children. Team Akura’s work approaches the issue through educational design: rather than treating a screen as a passive source of entertainment or repetition, the platform aims to make it an interactive learning environment. It is designed to offer support as a child practises, while complementing, not replacing, the role of families and educators in a child’s development.

Moving beyond repetition

The team’s initial research identified a gap in many existing digital learning aids. According to the students, many tools placed considerable emphasis on rote learning, while giving less attention to how children internalise and apply what they have learned.

In response, they developed an adaptive platform combining several modes of interaction. These include handwriting guidance, pronunciation assessment, gesture-based numeracy activities and emotion-aware learning. Together, the features are intended to provide personalised, real-time educational support.

The combination matters because early learning is not confined to one activity or skill. A child learning to recognise and write a character may also benefit from hearing and practising its pronunciation; numeracy activities can involve movement and gestures, while a system that responds to emotional cues may help shape the learning experience to the individual child.

The team’s concept therefore places interaction at the centre of the tool. Its proposed approach seeks to connect practice with feedback and engagement, rather than relying solely on repeated exercises. The competition recognition reflects the potential of this kind of student innovation: technical design is most meaningful when it is shaped around a clear human need.

An international challenge and two rounds of presentations

Team Akura competed under the theme “AI for Inclusive & Quality Education”, presenting its work in two rounds before panels of international experts. The judges brought experience in areas including cloud systems, cyber security, generative AI and data security.

The students described the presentation process as demanding, but said their confidence improved after the first round. The opportunity to explain their project to experienced professionals from around the world, and to see their ideas resonate with members of the industry, was reported as deeply rewarding and inspiring.

For undergraduate innovators, such a forum offers more than a platform to demonstrate a finished project. It also tests whether the problem has been clearly identified, whether the proposed solution can be explained to audiences beyond the university, and whether its design has the potential to make a practical contribution. In that respect, Team Akura’s recognition marks both a competition result and an important learning experience.

Recognition that carried into final examinations

Reports published by Lanka Business News and Colombo Gazette state that Team Akura was pronounced the winner earlier in 2026, when most of its members were preparing for their final examinations at SLIIT. The result gave the students an additional reason to complete their degrees strongly, while also bringing further mentorship from judges associated with leading technology and education organisations.

That continuing mentorship is a valuable part of the achievement. International recognition can open a door, but advice from experienced practitioners can help students understand how their ideas might be refined, developed and assessed in wider professional settings. The reports do not suggest that the platform has been released as a commercial product; its achievement, as described, is the team’s competition-winning project and the recognition it has received.

A meaningful result for Sri Lankan technology talent

The story offers an encouraging example of Sri Lankan undergraduates connecting academic work with a problem that matters to families, teachers and communities: how young children can engage with their mother tongue in a digital environment. It also demonstrates the breadth of work emerging from student teams, where computing, language learning and educational design can come together in one project.

For students and educators in Sri Lanka and abroad, Team Akura’s experience highlights the value of research-led projects that begin with a specific need, test assumptions and develop a solution with a clear purpose. The team’s success also underscores the contribution that local universities and mentors make in preparing young people to present their ideas on international stages.

Sinhala is a language of everyday life, family connection, literature and cultural memory for many Sri Lankan households. A thoughtfully designed learning tool cannot, by itself, carry the full richness of that inheritance; however, it can provide a useful additional way for children to practise and build confidence. Team Akura’s award-winning work points to the potential of technology to support that process when it is guided by educational purpose and careful design.

Readers interested in other education and technology initiatives in Sri Lanka can also explore eLanka’s coverage of an international partnership to strengthen higher education in hydrogen.

Sources: Lanka Business News | Colombo Gazette

This article was written based on the source https://www.lankabusinessnews.com/final-year-projects-real-world-impact-sliit-innovators-built-an-ai-tool-to-teach-sinhala/, kindly email us at info@eLanka.com.au if any information needs to be corrected.

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