My Expertise
Domain-specific computer systems for genomics data processing, performance optimisation of compute-intensive bioinformatics applications, GPGPU and FPGA for genomics data processing, bioinformatics, embedded systems, nanopore sequence analysis
Keywords
Fields of Research (FoR)
Bioinformatic methods development, Genomics and transcriptomics, Sequence analysis, Digital processor architectures, Electronic device and system performance evaluation, testing and simulation, Applications in life sciences, Distributed systems and algorithms, High performance computing, Performance evaluationBiography
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...view more
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).
My Grants
- 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)
My Qualifications
- 2020 / PhD in Computer Science and Engineering / UNSW Sydney / Australia
- 2015 / BSc Engineering (Hons.) in Computer Engineering / University of Peradeniya / Sri Lanka
My Awards
- 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