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Lead Bioinformatics Scientist

University of Houston

Project: Gene fusions as candidates for cancer vaccines

• Collaborated with multidisciplinary teams of molecular biologists, immunologists, and clinicians to design mRNA‐based vaccines for specific breast cancer subtypes and blood cancers.
• Developed an automated pipeline with R and Python that reduced processing time for identifying gene fusion candidates for vaccines from hours to seconds, achieving over a 99% improvement in efficiency
• Built a reproducible, scalable, and efficient pipeline to streamline in-silico validation of gene fusions (Bash)reducing analysis time by 80%
• Developed reproducible bioinformatics pipelines to analyze epigenetic data from ChIP-Seq experiments.
• Delivered reports and presentations to external collaborators translating complex bioinformatics findings into actionable insights for experimental design and clinical research.

Senior Research Associate, Computational Biology

Eastern Virginia Medical School

Project: Digital patient

• Collaborated with cross-functional teams, which included mass spectrometrists, computer scientists, and clinicians to analyze and interpret proteomics and clinical data to identify early detection biomarkers for prostate cancer.
• Spearheaded a project to develop the R package, promor, to streamline proteomics data analysis and machine learning based predictive modeling, resulting in 2 peer reviewed publications and 3 presentations
• Created reproducible reports using RMarkdown and Quarto to effectively communicate results from statistical data analysis to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Utilized git/GitHub for version control to ensure collaboration and code integrity within the teams

Postdoctoral Associate

University of Florida

Project: Eco-system dynamics in the rapidly changing Arctic

• Collaborated with multi‑disciplinary research teams from 2 universities to study rapidly changing Arctic ecosystems.
• Collected and processed Arctic moss samples for DNA isolation and constructed NGS libraries for Illumina sequencing to support genomic research on Arctic ecosystems.
• Developed and maintained NGS data pipelines for automated processing of genomics data (RAD-seq and target capture sequencing), facilitating downstream population genetic, phylogenetic, and statistical analysis of Arctic mosses.
• Provided training and guidance to 3 junior researchers/analysts, promoting their professional growth.
• Presented scientific reports and presentations to internal and external collaborators translating research findings into actionable insights for ecological studies.

Graduate Teaching/Research Assistant

Mississippi State University

Project: The functional and adaptive role of short tandem repeats (STRs)

• Developed qPCR assays for short tandem repeat (STR) containing genes and performed molecular tests and procedures to investigate the role of STRs in gene expression regulation in common sunflower
• Conducted statistical, differential expression, and enrichment analysis on bulk RNA-seq, qPCR, and PCR data identifying over 400 STRs involved in gene expression regulation in sunflowers, contributing to significant discoveries in plant biology and functional tandem repeats
• Trained and mentored 7 junior researchers promoting their professional development
• Published 5 research articles (first author) and presented 12 research talks and 3 posters.
• Taught 4 lower level and 3 upper-level biology laboratory courses.

Assistant Lecturer

Wayamba University of Sri Lanka

Research and teaching

• Supervised 2 undergraduate research projects resulting in 2 peer-reviewed publications.
• Taught 2 lower level and 4 upper-level laboratory courses, including Genetic Engineering.

PhD

Mississippi State University

Biological Sciences

BSc

Wayamba University of Sri Lanka

Biotechnology

Best Poster - Computational Mass Spectrometry

International Society for Computational Biology

Emerging Scholar

East Carolina University - Office for Equity and Diversity

Young Scientist Excellence Award

Mid‑South Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Society

Outstanding Graduate Research Assistant of the Year

Department of Biological Sciences, Mississippi State University

W. D. Hamilton Award - Honorable Mention

Society for the Study of Evolution

Outstanding Oral Presentation- Botany

Botanical Society of America (Southeastern section)

Outstanding Oral Presentation - Cell and Molecular Biology

Association of Southeastern Biologists

Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant of the Year

Department of Biological Sciences, Mississippi State University

Oral Presentation - Second Place

Mid‑South Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Society

Graduate Student Research Award

Botanical Society of America

Dr. Dharmawansa Senadhira Award for Best Performance in Biotechnology

Wayamba university of Sri Lanka