Plants are amazing creatures and have lots of hidden stories. And, that is why my journey started as a plant ecologist ended up being a plant cell biologist! On the day I experimented Impatiens balsamina plant with a red dye in the water at the primary school, it surprised me knowing that plants have an internal system like ours!

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In 2016, I was specialized in Botany at the Department of Botany, Faculty of Science, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. And ended up my final year research project in plant ecology under Dr. Thilanka Gunaratne’s supervision. As I continued to work in the field, a restoring Pinus plantation in Hantana, Kandy, Sri Lanka, I felt that was the perfect choice for me. However, when I saw the overdominance of Alstonia macrophylla in these Pinus plantations, I felt that there should be interesting biochemistry between Alstonia, Pinus plants and soil.

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While I was working as a fulltime teaching assistant at this university, I was lucky to get selected into Dr. Andrei Igamberdiev’s lab for a master programme in plant physiology at the Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada in 2018. I was fortunate to investigate the contribution of alternative oxidase enzyme in mitochondria to alleviate the plant anoxic stress. Moreover, I worked on the salt and drought stresses in Cowpea plants and seed germination of barley and rice. These two years gave me good insight and training in plant stress physiology and biochemistry. One day, I found a review paper on “what happens to plant mitochondria under low oxygen stress?”. It was surprising to know that mitochondria change their morphology during low oxygen stress. Therefore, I thought it is time to shift my way on to cell biology and dig deep to see how plant cell behaves under stress conditions. When I saw the findings of Dr. Geoffrey Wasteneys lab at UBC, especially the videos and images of microtubule dynamics in a plant cell during cargo delivery or abiotic stress, I thought a lab like this would be my next destination. I am fascinated to see the plant cytoskeletal dynamics and the behaviors of the associated protein under low oxygen stress.

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I should extend my deepest gratitude for Dr. Gunaratne, Dr. Igamberdiev and Dr. Wasteneys for trusting me though I was not an expert in those areas. When I look back the way I came so far, I believe that everyone has a special capability to do something new, despite their current knowledge, because all we do is learning till death…