Lanka Diunugala’25, founder and CEO of Prasync
Revolutionizing Military Training with Evidence, Not Memory
Inspired by her father’s two decades in the military and his firsthand accounts of training challenges, Lanka Diunugala’25 is tackling a problem that observed in training environments have long faced but few have addressed systematically: the difficulty of organizing captured training data into actionable insights from field training. Her journey began while participating in the FORGE’s Innovating for National Security (i4NS) program. Diunugala co-led field research at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center in Germany, conducting numerous interviews and usability engagements that revealed a systemic problem — after action reviews relied on memory, were fragmented, and often left critical lessons disorganized. Diunugala and her team recognized that this was an undeniable opportunity, and out of this research grew Prasync (formerly OrcaLink), a prototype platform that integrates training data (e.g GPS, audio, photos and Observer Coach Trainer notes), organizes them, and makes them searchable while preserving human judgment. Iteratively refined with end-user feedback, Prasync intends to reduce cognitive load for Observer Coach Trainers, improves consistency of feedback and enables trend tracking across training cycles. After i4NS, the recent alumna advanced Prasync beyond its initial research phase, focusing on infantry and platoon-level training, where evidence-based insights can most directly improve operational readiness, make after action reviews faster and more effective, and ensure lessons learned are reliably applied to future operations.
UC San Diego Ecosystem Connection: Beyond having origins with the i4NS program, Lanka’s work was further supported by The Basement, as well as externally by the Defense Innovation Unit Student Fellowship –Commercial (DISF-C).
Founding Team: Lanka Diunugala (Founder/CEO), Vivian Liu (CPO), Gunjan Shah (CTO), Erika Lee (Former CEO/Co-founder)