Tharindu Senapathi being congratulated by Professor Kevin Naidoo

The Masters programme in Computational Science was launched in 2016 with a cohort of six students from diverse backgrounds, ranging from electrical engineering through to Biochemistry, Physics and Chemistry, enrolling in the new degree programme. The degree was established as there is a growing critical dependence in every academic discipline grounded in scientific and engineering research for the use of computer simulation and large scale data analysis to understand observed phenomena and advance the frontiers of disciplinary knowledge.

The research topics that the current class of students are undertaking, are mostly focused on developing analytic and simulation models for the life sciences.  Engineers joining the programme are particularly keen on the developing machine learning algorithms for cancer classification and coding on SCRU’s state-of-the-art High Performance Compute Machines. Students from a chemistry and biochemistry background have focused on research challenges in the bioinformatic analysis of the effect of pharmaceuticals on gene expression levels in cancer patients and the development of reaction models for enzymology.  

Tharindu Senapathi, who is pictured above with Professor Kevin Naidoo, Head of the Scientific Computing Research Unit, made the transition from training in Chemistry in Sri Lanka, to the use of models and data analytics, that resulted in the development of inhibitors of key enzymes which are at the root of breast cancer tumour development.