Kassapa Ellepola

Doctor of Philosophy is the highest academic qualification/degree. I wanted to be among the people who earned this highest prestige. Also, I was interested in Microbiology during my undergraduate studies and I wanted to continue my education to the highest level possible.

NUS is a world-class university and is certainly among the best in Asia. It is reputed for its global approach to education and research and has a proven record of excellence. NUS offer state of the art research facilities and opportunities for graduate students that would prepare them for their future careers in academia or industry. Not to mention the ingenuity of the academic staff in NUS that are world leaders in their respective fields. The opportunity to work and collaborate with them and the inter-departmental/inter-faculty research activities would help you to excel, meet new people and learn from them. I have heard from my many friends from South Asian countries, from the South-East Asian region and China that Singapore is close to ‘home’ and that it is well connected if you want to go home for a quick break and coming from Sri Lanka, I fully agree with them. I also liked the multinational student body at NUS so that you can meet new people and learn about different cultures, preparing you to become a global citizen.

Be prepared. Graduate school can be very different from your undergraduate experience. During your undergrad, like myself, I believe you might have had to listen to hours and hours of lectures. But graduate school is the time that you would put everything you learned to use. You will be far more independent. Although your mentor will guide you, most of the time you are alone conceptualizing, hypothesizing and performing experiments and not to mention, troubleshooting. If you want to become a researcher, you will have to spend lot of time in the lab, but that one important finding can be really rewarding. You would still have to attend some lectures, but you can select the ones you are interested and is important for your field of study. The good thing is that NUS offers a lot of resources to help you, tons of it. You can have access to any research journal or publication in the world and always you can find an expert who might just be in a research lab across the street from your lab, to discuss a research problem. NUS also encourages people to network, attend conferences and get to know people from all over the world.

In my Ph.D., I studied the molecular interactions between polymicrobial communities of bacteria and fungi implicated in dental caries. Dental caries is among the most prevalent infectious diseases in the world and is associated with significant costs for its prevention and treatment. My Ph.D. project investigated the role of Streptococcus mutans-derived exoenzymes (termed glucosyltransferases, Gtfs) in mediating cross-kingdom biofilm interactions with the opportunistic yeast Candida albicans. Specifically, my work has focused on understanding the biological impact of GtfB binding interactions with C. albicans on mixed-species biofilm development process, Furthermore, I completed a comprehensive genomics-proteomics analysis to further understand the molecular mechanisms of this bacterial-fungal interaction

Yes. I was lucky to have a great supervisor (Dr. Jayampath Seneviratne).

The findings provided experimental evidence in support of the clinical observation where enhanced accumulation of Candida albicans is seen together with Streptococcus mutans, in patients with dental caries. The study also highlighted the involvement of Candida albicans in dental caries, a notion that was not well characterized prior to these findings and highlighted the importance of preventing Candida albicans as well during treatment of dental caries. Furthermore, the presence of C. albicans on the tooth surface may become a fungal reservoir for mucosal fungal infections and systemic mycoses in compromised host populations. The exoenzyme GtfB was identified to be important for enhancing Candida albicans biofilm formation in the presence of S. mutans. Therefore, GtfB can be a useful drug target for the alleviation/prevention of the mixed-species biofilm formation in dental caries, hence can be used in drug development.

The work was recognized with several prestigious awards from the International Association for Dental Research (IADR), the IADR Lion Dental Research award, the Colgate Research in Prevention award and runner-up at the IADR Unilever Hatton Divisional Award. I strongly believe that if you do good science, there are always people who recognizes it. Initially, you would have to think smart and work hard to produce a solid piece of impactful science. Then the next step is to know where to present your work and to present it clearly to the appropriate audience.

I am currently a postdoctoral research associate at the College of Dentistry, University of Illinois at Chicago. I am working on the mechanistic understanding and development of metal oxide nano-therapeutics for the prevention of dental caries.