Chathura Gunasekara

Houston, Texas

Bioinformatics · ML/AI · Data Engineering

I am a computational scientist with more than a decade of experience building genomics pipelines, machine-learning models, and research software. I work at the Children’s Nutrition Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

My research focuses on epigenomics: DNA methylation, systemic interindividual variation, and the epigenetic basis of complex traits and disease. I co-developed the Agilent SureSelect Baylor Human CoRSIV Panel and the Xtra DNAm Array with TruDiagnostic.

I hold a Ph.D. in Computational Science and Engineering from Michigan Technological University and a B.S. in Computational Physics from the University of Colombo. My work has appeared in Genome Biology, Translational Psychiatry, and Nucleic Acids Research.

This site is also my working notebook. I use it to document projects, explain what I am learning about deep learning and AI systems, and share the engineering behind research tools. The polished results matter, but so do the experiments, failures, and decisions that produced them.

Explore my projects · Read the learning log · View publications

news

Jul 01, 2025	New paper published in Nucleic Acids Research: Mouse metastable epialleles are extremely rare (PMID: 40694849).
Oct 01, 2023	Received the Dr. Dennis M. Bier Award for Best Pediatric Nutrition Research Publication from Baylor College of Medicine.
Apr 01, 2023	Co-developed the Agilent SureSelect Baylor Human CoRSIV Panel launched — enabling cost-effective population-scale DNA methylation profiling, now in use across multiple labs globally.

latest posts

Jul 23, 2026	Building in Public

selected publications

NAR

Mouse metastable epialleles are extremely rare

Chathura J. Gunasekara and others

Nucleic Acids Research, 2025

Bib

@article{gunasekara2025metastable,
  title = {Mouse metastable epialleles are extremely rare},
  author = {Gunasekara, Chathura J. and others},
  journal = {Nucleic Acids Research},
  volume = {53},
  number = {14},
  year = {2025},
}

Genome Biol.

Systemic interindividual epigenetic variation in humans is associated with transposable elements and under strong genetic control

Chathura J. Gunasekara and others

Genome Biology, 2023

Bib

@article{gunasekara2023transposable,
  title = {Systemic interindividual epigenetic variation in humans is associated with transposable elements and under strong genetic control},
  author = {Gunasekara, Chathura J. and others},
  journal = {Genome Biology},
  volume = {24},
  year = {2023},
}

Transl. Psychiatry

A machine learning case-control classifier for schizophrenia based on DNA methylation in blood

Chathura J. Gunasekara and others

Translational Psychiatry, 2021

Bib

@article{gunasekara2021schizophrenia,
  title = {A machine learning case-control classifier for schizophrenia based on DNA methylation in blood},
  author = {Gunasekara, Chathura J. and others},
  journal = {Translational Psychiatry},
  volume = {11},
  number = {1},
  pages = {412},
  year = {2021},
}

Genome Biol.

A genomic atlas of systemic interindividual epigenetic variation in humans

Chathura J. Gunasekara and others

Genome Biology, 2019

Bib

@article{gunasekara2019atlas,
  title = {A genomic atlas of systemic interindividual epigenetic variation in humans},
  author = {Gunasekara, Chathura J. and others},
  journal = {Genome Biology},
  volume = {20},
  pages = {105},
  year = {2019},
}