Currently, I’m working on my PhD research project titled “Integrative taxonomy of Sri Lankan shallow water demosponges and characterization of bioactive compounds from Rhabdastrella species”. The first focus of this project is to study the biodiversity of sponges in Sri Lanka and identify them using morphology and DNA barcoding techniques to facilitate future conservation and biodiversity-related projects. The second objective is to investigate the antimicrobial and anticancer activity of both aqueous and lipophilic extracts of marine sponges using bioassay-guided microfractionation and to isolate peptides from selected sponge species.