Dr. Printha Wijesinghe PhD, MSc, BSc

Dr. Printha Wijesinghe received dual doctoral degrees from Maastricht University in the Netherlands and the University of Sri Jayewardenepura in Sri Lanka during the period from 2009 to 2020. During this time, she made significant contributions to the establishment of a "human brain bank" in Sri Lanka and investigated age-related cytoskeletal pathologies in elderly human brains, representing two South Asian sample populations. Dr. Printha began her career in Canada as a part-time research assistant at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in 2017. She worked on patients with idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss (ISSNHL), exploring minimally invasive microRNA biomarkers, therapeutic efficiencies, and in vivo cell models to investigate the underlying pathological mechanisms. In 2021, Dr. Printha transitioned to a postdoctoral trainee position at UBC in a field more relevant to her PhD work. As a continuation of this position, she received a postdoctoral award from the Alzheimer Society Research Program (ASRP) in 2023. She is currently investigating postmortem human Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and control donor eyes to explore existing clearance mechanisms and using translational mouse models to identify potential early tear-based  microRNA biomarkers for AD diagnostic purposes.