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Brandeis University, Waltham, USA (2010 - Present)

 

My current research at Brandeis is with Prof. Jeff Gelles and Prof. Yane Kodev, where we are exploring the pathways of oligonucleotide dissociations using Multi-wavelength Single Molecule Fluorescence.

 

Northeastern University, Boston, USA (2003 - 2010)

 

My research at Northeastern was a partial requirement towards my Ph.D. degree. I worked with Prof. Mark C. Williams in his lab as a research assistant beginning May 2005. In our lab we use optical tweezers to investigate DNA-Protein interactions. My main research is a sub category of our lab’s goal, which is to investigate potential cancer and HIV drugs that bind DNA reversibly. By stretching a single DNA molecule with optical tweezers in the presence of drugs we were able to characterize their binding characteristics and kinetics quantitatively.

 

Since Ruthenium complexes have been a promising candidate for cancer therapy, several modifications are made to make them more effective. One of these modification is to covalently link two mononuclear ruthenium complexes to form a binuclear complexes which were developed at Chalmers University, Sweden. Slow kinetics of these molecules made it hard to study in bulk experiments. By mechanically manipulating the DNA molecule using optical tweezers we explored the threading of these binuclear ruthenium complexes. Very interesting results regarding their threading through the DNA bases are published in the Journal of American Chemical Society (link available in the publications section).

 

ActinomycinD (ActD) is one of the most studied antibiotic currently used in chemotherapy and also believed to inhibit HIV reverse transcription. Mechanism of interaction of ActD with nucleic acids is poorly understood and has been a controversial issue.  In our single molecule studies we were able to distinguish multiple binding modes of ActD and were able to quantify their binding parameters and kinetics to resolve the mystery of ActD binding to DNA (to be published soon).

 

University of Jaffna, Jaffna Sri Lanka (1999 - 2003)

 

Although the required research component of physics major is minimal, I have done multiple projects because I was deeply interested in exploring renewable energy sources. Located in a developing country and in a war zone the University of Jaffna didn’t have many financial or technical resources for advance research during my time as a student. The prevalent electric power outage naturally led to research in harvesting solar energy, which is available abundantly for the better part of the year. My major research project involved the design of a solar dryer using locally available material at low cost.

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