Dr. Meran Keshawa Ediriweera

Dr. Meran Keshawa Ediriweera is a lecturer in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka.

He was educated at the Richmond College, Galle (1991-2005). Following completion of the undergraduate degree in India (2006-2009), he joined the Institute of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (IBMBB), University of Colombo for his Master degree in Molecular Life Sciences (2010-2012). He was awarded his PhD in Molecular Biology and Medicinal Chemistry from the IBMBB in 2017. Upon completion of his PhD, Dr. Ediriweera worked as a Postdoctoral researcher at the IBMBB for almost two years. In 2019, he moved to South Korea for another Postdoctoral fellowship where he worked at the Functional Genomic Biochemistry laboratory of the Subtropical/Tropical Organism Gene Bank, Jeju National University.

He has worked as a visiting lecturer at the IBMBB and Postgraduate Institute of Medicine (PGIM) where he covered topics related to Cancer Genetics, Cancer Biology, Genetics, Molecular Biology, Biochemistry, Bioinformatics, Cell Biology and Medicinal Chemistry. He has also worked as a Scientific assistant in the Business Development Unit (BDU) of the IBMBB. Dr. Ediriweera has served as a resource person in many workshops and events conducted at the IBMBB including certificate course in Cell culture techniques, certificate course in Molecular Biological techniques, workshops on NMR spectroscopy and cancer stem cells.

Dr. Ediriweera has nearly 51 publications in peer reviewed international journals related to Cell Biology, Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, Pharmacognosy, Nanotechnology, Bioinformatics and Drug discovery. For the first time from Sri Lanka, he was able to publish his research findings and several write-ups in reputed international journals such as Biomedicine and Pharmacotherapy, Oncology Letters, Seminars in Cancer Biology, Drug Discovery Today, BIOCELL and Medicines. In addition, during his tenure as a post-doctoral fellow, he was the first to publish a write-up in Pharmacology & Therapeutics, one of the top 10 most cited journals in pharmacology, from the Jeju National University, South Korea.  In addition, as a full affiliation, he was able to publish his research findings in the journal “Biochimie” for the first from the Jeju National University. During his tenure as a PhD student and Postdoctoral researcher at the IBMBB, he has isolated several novel compounds from Sri Lankan medicinal plants. He also has a number of communications published in local and international conferences. Through personal invitations from journals, Dr. Ediriweera has reviewed nearly 600 research papers, review articles, short communications, grant proposals and book chapters published in 176 different journals/books. He has supervised and guided many under graduate and post graduate students working in the fields of Cell Biology, Molecular Biology, Biochemistry and Medicinal Chemistry.

He was awarded the Presidential Award for Scientific Publications (2016) and Sri Lanka Association for the Advancement of Science (SLAAS) General Research Committee (GRC) best Postgraduate research award in Life and Earth Sciences in recognition of research carried out in Sri Lanka (2018). In 2018, he was sponsored by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to participate for the Global Technology Entrepreneurship and Commercialization (GTEC-2018) workshop at the Osaka University, Japan and summer intensive course at the Osaka Institute of Technology (OIT), Japan where he obtained a training on science-based entrepreneurship education. In 2020, he was awarded the outstanding poster presentation award by The Korean Society for Applied Biological Chemistry (KSABC) in an international conference held. He has also received several travel grants to participate international conferences. Dr. Ediriweera received his first international grant support with an amount of  ~130, 000 USD as the Principal investigator from the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) to investigate the effects of odd-chain saturated fatty acids on epigenetic modifications in breast cancer cells (Grant number: 2020R1I1A1A01070950). He is currently serving as a member of the interim board of study in Medicinal Chemistry and Biotechnology and academic committee of the IBMBB, University of Colombo.