Dr. Gunatilleke pursued her graduate studies at the interface of Chemistry and Biology earning her Ph.D. at University of Southern California conducting research to understand the mechanism of action of orally available Rheumatoid Arthritis drug Auranofin. Her doctoral studies made her interested in learning about enzymes, their structure and function which are extremely important in drug design. She pursued two post-doctoral research studies in Molecular and Structural Biology area focusing on the study of enzyme function, protein-protein interaction and the use of protein structure to understand and improve the inhibitor effectiveness. Her first postdoctoral study was at University of California, Irvine (UCI). At UCI, she developed research to understand the structural changes that occur when cytochromes P450 function. Cytochromes P450s are therapeutic targets in cancers and the study of structural changes that occur when they function would provide valuable insight into designing more effective drugs. Dr. Gunatilleke’s most recent post-doctoral research at the University of California, San Francisco was focused on identifying small molecules with high binding affinities to target enzyme sterol 14α-demethylase (CYP51), a novel drug target for Chagas disease using high-throughput small molecule screens for potential hit-to-lead optimization and structural studies of CYP51 using X-ray crystallography.