Manori  Perera moved to Central Illinois in 2008 to work in an astro-chemistry group at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign as a postdoctoral researcher.  Prior to that, she finished her thesis work in the photo-dissociation of gas-phase applications at University of Massachusetts Amherst.  She will be teaching analytical chemistry while building a custom made instrument to study reaction kinetics and dynamics at IWU.  Her research interests are in gas-phase spectroscopy, especially astronomically related molecular ions.  She is no stranger to IWU since she has been at IWU for various events as a spouse of a physics faculty member, Thushara Perera.