Amaya is an island girl who grew up in Colombo, Sri Lanka before moving to Hong Kong for her undergraduate studies in Fall 2013. She attended the University of Hong Kong and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry in 2017. At HKU, she began her first research opportunity with Dr. Xuechen Li on the synthesis of teixobactin derivates (an antibacterial peptide) as her final year research project. While in HK, she loved spending weekends taking long hikes and swimming in its pristine beaches. She moved to Michigan in Fall 2017 to begin graduate school at MSU and joined the Draths group in Dec 2017 where she is currently working on developing biocatalytic routes to high value C3 and C4 chemicals from methane-derived renewable feedstocks. Away from lab, Amaya enjoys reading, swimming and cooking for friends and family.