Punya received her BSc (engineering) degree from the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, in 1993. Her specialization was power systems engineering. She worked at Cruickshank & Partners (Ceylon) Ltd., Sri Lanka, a power system protection and control design company, as a project engineer after graduation and then joined the University of Moratuwa academic staff. In 2008, she received a BSc in actuarial mathematics from the University of Manitoba, Canada. She worked as a senior analyst at one of Canada’s largest insurance providers for over 13 years. Punya has a sound understanding of electrical power system principles with specific expertise in electromagnetic transient simulation using PSCAD software.