Dr Ragel was appointed a Senior Lecturer in Computer Engineering at the University of Peradeniya in December 2007 and has been a Professor since October 2017. He has been a Professional Member of the IEEE and IEEE Computer Society since 2005 and a Senior Member since 2014. He is also a Professional Member of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM).

Prof Ragel has co-authored over 200 peer-reviewed articles on Internet of Things, Wearable Computing, Bioinformatics, and Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. He has won several best paper awards in conference papers, the most prolific Sri Lankan author award from Elsevier Research in 2017 and the Presidential award for scientific publication in Sri Lanka in 2018 and 2023. He was also named the top scientist in computer science in Sri Lanka by the AD Scientific Index in 2021 and 2022 and the best computer scientist in the country in 2023 and 2024. He was a visiting research scholar at the UNSW – Sydney many times, QUT – Brisbane, UIUC – Illinois and ANU – Canberra once each.

Prof Ragel has been the consulting chief executive officer at the Lanka Research and Education Network (LEARN), the national NREN, since 2017. With his involvement, LEARN was able to step up for a significant milestone by launching the Asi@Connect Project in Sri Lanka in 2017, which brought many opportunities for the LEARN Research and Education (R&E) network community to get involved in utilising the project resources and funds. He has represented Sri Lanka in the Asi@Connect Governors meeting and has been a Council Member of Asia Pacific Advanced Network (APAN) since 2017. Since 2020, he is also the Vice-Chair of the Asi@Connect Steering Committee. With COVID-19 lockdowns, LEARN is helping the university community in the country connect and engage in productive research and education activities online.

At the National level, Prof Ragel was a Core Group member for Higher Education at the Presidential Task Force for Education, which was established in 2020. He is a member of the UGC Standing Committee on the Development of IT Infrastructure and Online Education and the UGC-appointed committee to develop the Concept of Virtual / Hybrid University. He also serves as a member of the Presidential Committee to Formulate the AI Strategy for Sri Lanka, a committee formulated recently with the advancement of Generative AI. He is also a founder of the AI Forum for Academics (AIFA). This academic syndicate explores the opportunities and challenges of GenAI in Higher education based at the University of Peradeniya.