Asking how novel structures emerge — from a frog's urostyle to the human pelvis.

I'm an evolutionary developmental biologist studying how novel structures arise — using the vertebrate skeleton as a 400-million-year archive of change.

Since 2022, I've been a Helen Hay Whitney Postdoctoral Fellow in the Capellini Lab at Harvard's Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, where I work on the evo-devo of the human pelvic girdle and the diseases linked to its peculiar architecture.

Before Harvard, I completed my PhD in the Shubin Lab at the University of Chicago (2016–2021), describing the urostyle — a novel skeletal element in frogs that fuses tail vertebrae into a single pelvic-coupled rod.

Earlier, I earned my B.Sc. (Honours) and Master's at the University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka, working in the EEB Lab from 2009 to 2014.

Soon I am hoping to open my own lab as an Assistant Professor — focused on building a comparative, deeply-developmental view of the human skeleton.

My research draws together developmental genetics, comparative anatomy, and the deep evolutionary record — using model organisms to read the human skeleton as the latest chapter of a much longer story.