Chathurani Ranathunge
Bioinformatics Scientist | Computational Biologist

Hi! My name is Chathurani Ranathunge. I am a bioinformatics scientist with over a decade of experience working with multiple types of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) data. I currently work as the Lead Bioinformatics Scientist at the University of Houston’s Sequencing and Gene Editing core (UHSEQ), where I design and develop bioinformatics pipelines for cancer immunotherapy research. Though my current work revolves around cancer genomics and immunotherapy, my scientific journey began in evolutionary biology and population genetics.
I earned my Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from Mississippi State University under the guidance of Dr. Mark Welch. My dissertation focussed on the role of short tandem repeats (STRs) in rapid adaptive evolution. Using the common sunflower (Helianthus annuus) as a model system, I studied how STRs fine-tune gene expression in response to environmental changes.
After completing my Ph.D., I accepted a postdoctoral position in Dr. Stuart McDaniel’s lab at the University of Florida, where I studied rapidly changing Arctic eco-systems. My postdoc gave me an opportunity to step out of my comfort zone - both scientifically and literally. I went from sunflowers to mosses and from Mississippi to the Arctic tundra. But more importantly, it is during this time that I discovered my passion for bioinformatics. I realized that while benchwork no longer excited me, the process of analyzing data, and finding meaningful patterns in biological data did.
This realization led me to a position at the Eastern Virginia Medical School, where I transitioned into bioinformatics focused research, gaining experience in tool development and cancer biomarker discovery. Looking back, I truly believe that my combined experience in wet-lab and computational analysis has shaped the way I approach bioinformatics. Now, my goal is to continue leveraging biological data to drive biomedical research forward, developing new ways to transform large biological datasets into actionable discoveries, and, last but not least, sharing the magic of bioinformatics with future scientists.
news
Aug 03, 2024 | The final chapter of my dissertation is now published in Biomolecules! ![]() |
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May 15, 2024 | Excited to share that I’ve started a new role as a Lead Bioinformatics Scientist @ the UH Sequencing Core! ![]() |
Jul 31, 2023 | promor v0.2.1 is now available on CRAN! ![]() |