Biography

Dammika Nandanie Amugoda ia a curator/research scientist in NCATS’ Division of Preclinical Innovation, where she works on the Global Ingredient Archival System (GiNAS), an informatics platform that NCATS scientists developed in collaboration with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Officially, the software produced by NCATS is called the Global Substance Registration System (GSRS). Unofficially, “GiNAS” is often used interchangeably with “GSRS” to refer to the software.

Amugoda ensures accuracy in the storing of FDA substance information on chemicals and biologics, including proteins and cell therapies. She has been working with the FDA substance registration team since 2010. The primary objective of this project is migrating data and curating FDA-regulated substances. Before this assignment, Amugoda worked on several projects as an FDA research fellow performing gene mining and microarray studies.

Research Topics

Amugoda conducts research to identify the chemistry of real substances, the biochemical and cellular mechanisms of drug action, and the relationships between biological pathways and diseases. She finds better ways to represent them in GiNAS and other substance registration systems.