Thilina Samarathunga is currently enrolled in a MPhil, which is being upgraded to a PhD, at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo where his research focuses on Development and validation of a cardiovascular risk prediction model for adults in Sri Lanka using the GHRU South Asia Biobank Sri Lanka cohort.

He is employed as a Research Assistant at the Diabetes Research Unit, Department of Clinical Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo. He has contributed to several large-scale projects, including the Sri Lanka Non-Communicable Diseases Survey (SLNCDS), the NIHR Global Health Research Unit for Cardiovascular Disease and Type-2 Diabetes in South Asians (GHRU) on Diabetes and Cardiovascular Disease in South Asia and the iHealth-T2D follow-up study.

He is passionate about improving public health through evidence-based research and his research centres on clinical and epidemiological research, with a particular focus on NCDs such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, kidney disease and cancer. He has authored and co-authored several publications, and his research interests include, prevention and control of NCDs, epidemiology and public health approaches in low- and middle-income settings, and the psychological aspects of disease such as diabetes distress.