Find Himaya Siddhihalu Wickrama Hewage on
Dr Himaya Siddhihalu Wickrama Hewage is biochemist in training with multi-disciplinary expertise in exploring nature’s chemical diversity to identify and characterise molecular ligands for biotechnological advances including drug discovery.
She obtained her PhD in Biochemistry/Molecular Biology (2013) from Pukyong National University, South Korea, where she studied the structure function of anti-inflammatory modulators from a range of marine flora and fauna. After one year of Postdoctoral studies at the Marine Bio-Process Research Centre, South Korea she relocated to Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB) at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia as a recipient of the UQ Postdoctoral Fellowship (2015). At IMB Himaya developed a pipeline using omics technologies and functional assays for high-throughput characterisation of cone snail venoms to unravel therapeutically valuable venom peptides while understanding the chemical evolution of cone snail venoms.
In June 2023, Himaya joined the research group of Dr. Sonia Henriques at the Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia (based in the Translational Research Institute) to explore endosomal escape of peptide ligands and characterise the endosomal membranes using biophysics and lipidomics. She has co-authored over 30 research publications and has presented her research at over 15 international scientific conferences.