Sri Lanka | Kirigaran Yogarajah

Meet Kiri

Originally from Colombo, Sri Lanka, Kiri chose to study in Sydney instead of regional Australia for the city’s professional opportunities in civil engineering and accessible public transportation. Another deciding factor was the opportunity to live in a culturally rich city—featuring a global food scene, beautiful beaches, and exciting nightlife.

“I did receive offers from other universities, but UTS was my top pick because of its high world ranking, QS rating, and the fact that it is Australia’s number 1 young university. Since it is located in the heart of the Sydney, it provides you with a lot of job opportunities while you study and after you study. For engineering, it has good industrial connections with well-reputed companies.”

UTS is ranked first in Australia and eighth in the world of highest performing young universities according to Times Higher Education (THE). UTS is also in the top 150 universities in the world according to QS World University Rankings in 2022.

The learning experience was certainly a highlight during Kiri’s time at UTS. After undergraduate engineering students complete a number of credits, they have the opportunity to take masters modules taught by industry experts.

Engineering Mechanics was taught by the best instructor, Associate Professor Anne Gardner. She broke up the difficult concepts into very simple steps to make sure everyone understood. She was friendly and responsive in providing feedback and answering questions. Courses were taught by industry experts who have been working in the field. That gave us the opportunity to solve real world engineering problems, rather than just studying the theory.

Upon graduation, Kiri secured a role with Sydney-based Sustainable Energy Network Solutions (SENS) as a Graduate Civil Engineer. Three months later, his job title was updated to Civil Engineer. Within a year of joining SENS, Kiri became a Civil Project Engineer.

“UTS prepared me in a way so that whatever situation arises, I could tackle and solve the problem. This is practice oriented learning—UTS taught not only theoretical knowledge, it also gave me confidence to confront any issue regardless of the scenario.”

Kiri was originally hired to work on multibillion-dollar urban development projects (building sustainable skyscrapers, developing roads, structural engineering, etc.) with international companies. However, those projects were delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the meantime, Kiri has had the opportunity to work on Lendlease projects—including The Northern Road that will lead to the upcoming Western Sydney Airport, as well as design projects energy utilities on Ausgrid and Endeavour Energy projects.