Tharindi Maiwila Gamarachchige

Tharindika Madiwila Gamarachchige is a third-year PhD candidate at James Cook University, investigating the role of potassium ion channels in regulating vascular tone and maintaining aortic wall stability in abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) pathogenesis.

Tharindi is currently on official study leave from her position as a Lecturer in Veterinary Surgery and Therigenology at the Department of Veterinary Clinical Sciences, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Science, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. She is also a Sri Lanka Veterinary Council registered veterinarian . Since 2018, she has served as a clinician in the Veterinary Teaching Hospital, where she has extensive experience in soft tissue and orthopedic surgery across companion, wild, and zoo animals. Her clinical responsibilities include pre-operative assessment, anesthesia administration, surgical procedures, and post-operative care, ensuring high standards of animal welfare.

Her research expertise includes in vivo and in vitro experimental techniques, with substantial hands-on experience in mouse and rat handling, breeding, and surgical procedures. She is proficient in anesthesia, ovariectomy, wound closure, oral gavage, and subcutaneous injections, and has been approved to perform elastase–BAPN mouse models of AAA under institutional guidelines. Tharindi has completed multiple animal studies and contributed to several more within her research group. She has also undergone ANZCCART ComPass training and institutional animal ethics training, and has been assessed as competent in advanced surgical and animal handling procedures.

In addition to animal-based research, she is skilled in a range of molecular and physiological techniques, including western blotting, PCR, histology, cell culture, ion flux assays, organ bath studies, and bioinformatics analysis using R for genomics and transcriptomics data.

Tharindi completed her MPhil in Clinical Biochemistry at the University of Peradeniya (2023), where her research investigated the therapeutic potential of the NF-κB inhibitor SN52 in ameliorating osteopenia using an ovariectomized mouse model. She also holds a Bachelor of Veterinary Science (BVSc) with First Class Honours. She is a recipient of a full postgraduate research scholarship from James Cook University and a competitive research grant from the College of Medicine and Dentistry.

Alongside her research, she contributes to teaching as a casual academic at the College of Science and Engineering at James Cook University, in Veterinary Anatomy

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-4934-804X