Biography

I was born in Jaffna, Sri Lanka during the peak of the war. My parents had lost their house to aerial bombing two years before I was born and three weeks after their wedding. After I was born, we were displaced five times. Between 2001 and 2005, I studied in New Delhi where my mother went to do a PhD and hence missed most part of the peaceful time when a ceasefire was held. The fighting started again in 2005 and continued until 2009. In 2009, transport between Jaffna and Colombo, the capital city, became possible. I used this opportunity to sit for the London AL examinations and was fortunate to win a Reach Oxford scholarship.At Oxford I was able to learn about research in different areas of Physics by participating in small research projects supervised by my tutors. In particular, I became interested in computational biophysics and I am currently working on a project on the molecular dynamics of proteins for my undergraduate degree. At Cambridge, I will be using the same techniques to study the mechanisms of activation and silencing of genes in DNA.

Previous Education

University of Oxford