Lihini Jayasinghe is currently a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Chemistry where she is advised by Professor Peidong Yang. Lihini received her B.S. in Chemistry from Institute of Chemistry Ceylon, where she was funded by the Royal Society of Chemistry, UK to conduct research with Professor Hagan Bayley on screening 3D microtumours with small-molecule anticancer drugs. Prior to beginning her Ph.D., she worked as an intern and research scientist at Sri Lanka Institute of Nanotechnology, where her research focused on derivatives of graphene as anode materials for lithium-ion batteries.
As a Kavli ENSI Fellow, Lihini will expand her doctoral research on CdS-based model systems to further investigate flavoproteins and ferredoxins involved in microbial charge transfer. By combining isolated biomolecular studies with whole-cell biohybrid investigations using X-ray absorption spectroscopy, cryogenic EPR, and time-resolved optical spectroscopies, she aims to uncover electron injection pathways, interfacial charge transfer mechanisms, and kinetic bottlenecks that govern efficient solar-to-chemical energy conversion in biohybrid systems.