- 2015 / BSc Engineering (Hons.) in Computer Engineering / University of Peradeniya / Sri Lanka
Dr Hasindu Gamaarachchi
- 2020 / PhD in Computer Science and Engineering / UNSW Sydney / Australia
Hasindu Gamaarachchi is a senior lecturer at the School of Computer Science and Engineering, UNSW Sydney. He is also a visiting scientist in the Genomic Technologies Group at Garvan Institute of Medical Research. From 2020 to 2022, he worked as a Genomics Computing Research Scientist at Garvan Institute of Medical Research. Hasindu completed his PhD in Computer Science and Engineering at UNSW Sydney in 2020. He has served as a lecturer at the Department of Computer Engineering and a resource person at NVIDIA research centre at the University of Peradeniya. He completed his bachelor’s degree with first-class honours in Computer Engineering from the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka in 2015.
Hasindu Gamaarachchi focuses on the design, development and optimisation of bioinformatics software and hardware for real-time sequencing data analysis; and, prototyping novel domain-specific computer systems for efficient genomics data analysis. He has more than ten years of experience in embedded computing systems, computer architecture, general-purpose computing with the use of a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), high-performance computing and low-level system programming, which he leverages for the architecture-aware design of efficient computational systems for bioinformatics. Examples of his work include: an iterative genome assembly method that uses nanopore adaptive sampling to produce near-complete genome assemblies (Gamaarachchi, Nature Communications 2025); a novel domain-specific file format for efficient nanopore data processing (Gammaarachchi, Nature Biotechnology 2022); and, GPU-accelerated adaptive banded event alignment algorithm which is a core component in nanopore data analysis (Gammaarachchi, BMC Bioinformatics 2020).
- Publications
- Media
- Grants
- Awards
- Research Activities
- Engagement
- Teaching and Supervision
- 2023-2026: ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award– Fast, lightweight and live nanopore sequencing analysis – (sole CI, $453,913)
- 2025-2026: NHMRC Ideas Grants – Advanced computational methods to enhance long-read sequencing in genomic medicine – (CI, $807,000)
- 2025-2029: MRFF Genomics Health Futures Mission Grants – Delivering benefit for all Australians in the new era of complete genomics – (CI, $4,990,250)
- 2023-2026: ARC Discovery Projects – Custom computing for DNA analysis of third generation sequencers – (CI, $439,110)
- 2023-2025: MRFF Genomics Health Future Mission Grants – A national long-read genome sequencing program to improve rare disease diagnosis – (CI, $2,938,900)
- 2023-2024: MRFF Genomics Health Future Mission Grants – Harnessing nanopore sequencing technology to improve diagnosis of human disease – (CI, $954,000)
- 2022-2023: MRFF Early Career Researcher Grant – Developing a long-read nanopore sequencing platform for Indigenous genomics – (CI, $986,000)
- 2025 / Australian Museum Macquarie University Eureka Prize for Outstanding Early Career Researcher
- 2024 / “Torsten Seemann” Outstanding Bioinformatics Software Developer Award – Australian Bioinformatic And Computational Biology Society (ABACBS)
- 2021 / Outstanding PhD Thesis award by Australian Bioinformatics And Computational Biology Society (ABACBS)
- 2021 / Dean's Award for Outstanding PhD Theses awarded by UNSW Sydney
- 2020 / Grand finalist (third place winner) in the Association for Computing Machinery Student Research Competition (ACM SRC)
- 2019 / First place in the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Embedded Systems Student Research Competition (ACM SIGBED SRC) at Embedded Systems Week Conference
- 2019 / Best poster award in Australasian Genomic Technologies Association (AGTA) Conference
- 2016 / C.A. Hewavitharana Prize awarded by University of Peradeniya for best performance in Engineering
- 2016 / Industrial and Financial Systems (IFS) Gold Medal awarded by University of Peradeniya for best performance in Computer Engineering
- 2016 / Best presenter award in Present Around The World 2016 organised by Institution of Engineering and Technology-Young Professionals Section (IET-YPS) Sri Lanka
- 2016 / Best technical paper award in Annual Technical Conference of Institution of Engineering and Technology-Young Professionals Section (IET-YPS) Sri Lanka