Dr. Mihindukulasuriya got her PhD in Biology with an emphasis in Immunology from Baylor College of Medicine. Her research focused on the role of protein phosphatase 4, PP4, in cellular signaling. PP4 and its regulatory subunits are the subject of research in several types of cancers and believed to play a role in metastasis and aggressive tumor growth. She was a postdoctoral research associate at Washington University in St. Louis in the laboratory of Dr. David Wang for 4 years, where she identified and characterized novel viruses, including Quaranfil, Nyamanini, Midway Virus and SW1, using a pan-viral microarray and developing the protocols to utilize next generation sequencing for viral discovery. She also helped train staff, generate and analyze data to set up the Washington University Pathogen Discovery Core. She worked in the laboratory of Dr. George Weinstock and Dr. Makedonka Mitreva on the Human Microbiome Project, characterizing the microbiome of multiple body sites in healthy and diseased individuals using 16S and whole genome shotgun (WGS) sequencing. She also has experience working on the genetics of pathogenicity in the fungus, Cryptococcus neoformans in the laboratory of Dr. Maureen Donlin. She joined Dr. Cruchaga’s lab in 2018, working on RNAseq data processing and analysis. Her experience in the generation, processing and analysis of next generation sequencing will allow her to process and analyze the bulk and single cell RNAseq data generated during this project.