Kasun Athukorala Arachchige

University of Queensland

Kasun Athukorala Arachchige completed his undergraduate studies at the Institute of Chemistry Ceylon in Sri Lanka, where he was awarded the Best Practical Chemistry Award. He then pursued an MSc in Analytical Chemistry, achieving a Higher Distinction pass at Northumbria University, Newcastle. This led to receiving a full EPSRC PhD scholarship at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. His PhD focused on synthesising organotin and chalcogen compounds and studying them by X-ray crystallography.

After completing his PhD in 2014, Kasun moved to Australia and worked as a research fellow at UNSW's Chemistry Department until 2016. He then secured a competitive three-year UQ fellowship to work on New bimetallic catalysts to synthesise Spiroketals in 2016. He worked at the School of Chemistry at UQ until 2020. Currently, He is an electron, X-ray, and crystallography scientist at the Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis at UQ. In this role, he manages the crystallisation facility and develops MicroED and crystallisation techniques for proteins and small molecules. His research interests include protein and small molecule crystallography and electron diffraction.