The excellent academic performance of Dr. GayaniSenevirathne has helped her to win a prestigious award in biomedical sciences, called the Helen Hay Whitney Fellowship offered by the New York based Whitney Foundation. The Helen Hay Whitney Postdoctoral Fellowship is offered for support post-doctoral research in the biomedical sciences. This fellowship is recognised across the world and has been previously awarded to several Nobel laureates. Dr. GayaniSenevirathne studied in the science stream for her G.C.E. A/L exams at Mahamaya Girls’ College in Kandy. She entered thePeradeniya University Science Faculty in 2009, to specialise in Zoology and Molecular Biology.

From that she graduated with a first-class degree. She also received two presidential awards for her Researches and received an award for best science research from Sri Lanka Research Institution. She also published several publications, and earned an award for academic excellence. After she graduated she earned a fellowship to complete her doctoral studies at the University of Chicago, which is one of the top ten universities in the world. Her doctorate work discovered a gene in frog development that could be used to treat an abnormality that we see in the axial column of human babies before birth. This work gained a lot attention in the United States and the research paper was published in a high-ranked journal called the Proceedings of the National Sciences.

She completed her degree in four and a half years, and soon after joined Harvard University as a postdoctoral scholar to understand how the pelvic girdle of humans develop and the diseases associated with it. She hopes to come back to Sri Lanka and help girls in science to achieve their dreams. Dr. Gayani’s life long-range career goal is to run her own lab one day, an environment where everyone is accepted, empowering females and minorities, and addressing scientific research questions in vertebrate evolution using cutting-edge techniques.

Her older brotherAshanSenevirathne works as a Senior Executive Engineer at Telstra in Australia while her younger sister Salani Senevirathne studied Maths for her A/L exams at Kandy Girls High school. She is reading for her Bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering after she received a Chancellor’s Award scholarship from the University of Massachusetts in the United States. Dr. Senevirathne’s father, Upul Seneviratne, is the Assistant Commissioner of the Excise Department in Kandy. Her mother, BhagyaSeneviratne, is a research assistant for the CETCO water purification company.