Wimal Pathmasiri

Wimal Pathmasiri, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Nutrition Research Institute in the Department of Nutrition. With a BS in Biology from the University of Colombo (1991), MPhil in Chemistry from the University of Colombo (1996), Licentiate of Philosophy in Pharmacognosy from Uppsala University (2003), and PhD in Chemistry from Uppsala University (2007), Pathmasiri has built a distinguished career in metabolomics and systems biology. His professional journey includes postdoctoral research associateships at UNC Chapel Hill's School of Pharmacy Metabolomics Laboratory and Departments of Biochemistry and Biophysics (2007-2010), followed by a postdoctoral scientist role at RTI International's Consortium for Molecular Epidemiology, Genomics, Environment and Health (2010-2012), and Research Biochemist in Systems and Translational Sciences at RTI International (2012-2017). Since March 2017, he has held his current position at UNC.

Pathmasiri's research interests center on developing and applying metabolomics to uncover metabolic pathway perturbations linked to disease states, therapeutic interventions, and environmental exposures. Key areas include cancer, childhood obesity, early-life antibiotic exposure, environmental toxicology, kidney disease, osteoarthritis, and rare diseases, with a focus on microbial metabolism and human health interactions. He has received prestigious awards such as the Helmsley Fellowship in Proteomics at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (2016), RTI President's Award (2012), RTI Outstanding Paper Award (2016), and RTI Highly Cited Author (2015). Among his significant publications are "Associations between the gut microbiome and metabolome in early life" (Nguyen et al., BMC Microbiology, 2021), "Untargeted analysis of first trimester serum to reveal biomarkers of pregnancy complications: a case-control discovery phase study" (Harville et al., Scientific Reports, 2021), "Metabolomics reveals biomarkers of opioid use disorder" (Ghanbari et al., Translational Psychiatry, 2021), "A Metabolomics Approach to Investigate Kukoamine B - A Potent Natural Product With Anti-diabetic Properties" (Li et al., Frontiers in Pharmacology, 2018), and "A systems biology approach utilizing a mouse diversity panel identifies genetic differences influencing isoniazid-induced microvesicular steatosis" (Church et al., Toxicological Sciences, 2014). Pathmasiri's work contributes to biomarker discovery and nutrigenomics, enhancing insights into exposome-health relationships.

Professional Email: wimal_pathmasiri@unc.edu