Dr. Meran Keshawa Ediriweera

Dr. Meran Keshawa Ediriweera is a Senior Lecturer in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in the Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. He was educated at Richmond College, Galle (1991–2005). After completing his undergraduate degree in India (2006–2009), he joined the Institute of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (IBMBB), University of Colombo, for his Master’s degree in Molecular Life Sciences (2010–2012). He was awarded a PhD in Molecular Biology and Medicinal Chemistry from the IBMBB in 2017. In 2019, he moved to South Korea for a postdoctoral fellowship at the Functional Genomic Biochemistry Laboratory of the Subtropical/Tropical Organism Gene Bank, Jeju National University.

Dr. Ediriweera has authored nearly 64 publications in peer-reviewed international journals covering Cell Biology, Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, Pharmacognosy, Nanotechnology, Bioinformatics, and Drug Discovery. For the first time from Sri Lanka, he published his research findings and several write-ups in reputed international journals such as Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy, Oncology Letters, Seminars in Cancer Biology, Drug Discovery Today, BIOCELL, and Medicines. During his postdoctoral tenure, he was the first to publish a write-up in Pharmacology & Therapeutics, one of the top 10 most cited journals in pharmacology, from Jeju National University. Additionally, as a full affiliation, he published his research findings in the journal Biochimie for the first time from Jeju National University.

Through personal invitations from journals, Dr. Ediriweera has reviewed nearly 640 research papers, review articles, short communications, grant proposals, and book chapters published in over 200 different journals and books. He has supervised and guided undergraduate and postgraduate students in Cell Biology, Molecular Biology, Biochemistry, and Medicinal Chemistry.

He has been awarded the Presidential Award for Scientific Publications (2016 and 2019) and the 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 2020, he received the Outstanding Poster Presentation Award from The Korean Society for Applied Biological Chemistry (KSABC) at an international conference. He has also received several travel grants to participate in international conferences. Dr. Ediriweera was ranked among the top 2% of scientists from Sri Lanka in 2023, 2024, and 2025, according to Stanford University’s list of the World’s Top 2% Scientists. In addition, he was recognized among the top 0.5% of scholars worldwide and as a top scholar in Life Sciences and Biochemistry in Sri Lanka, according to the 2024 ScholarGPS rankings (Calculated over last five years).

Dr. Ediriweera received his first international research grant (~130,000 USD) as 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). In 2022, he was awarded a TWAS/UNESCO research grant. In 2024, the International Coconut Community (ICC) appointed Dr. Ediriweera as a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee on Health (SACH).