Outreach & Community Engagement
A continuing commitment to community health, recovery, scientific exchange, and practical access to knowledge.

Community gathering during a Positive Deviance/Hearth program in Sri Lanka. Photograph by Jonathan Weerakkody.
A continuing commitment to community health, recovery, and access.
I was born in Sri Lanka to parents who both worked in the NGO sector. During the civil war, my father worked in war-affected areas. Their work shaped my understanding that support has to be practical, sustained, and accountable to the people closest to a problem. I left at eighteen to study engineering in the United States, and I continue to support this work alongside my family.
Each setting is different, but the work has centered on supporting families with young children, helping schools recover and continue, creating routes into STEM, and sharing knowledge through trusted local partners. I remain involved because this work matters in its own right.
Community work in Sri Lanka, beyond a single role
These roles began at distinct points in my training, but they are part of a longer family commitment that I continue to support. Learn about the organizations or support their work directly below.
Supported post-tsunami preschool redevelopment, psychosocial-support activities, and community-resilience programs in Sri Lanka.
Supported a Positive Deviance/Hearth community-nutrition program focused on locally sustainable approaches to childhood nutrition.
Delivered mathematics and science instruction in rural schools facing persistent staffing and educational-resource gaps.
Making scientific exchange more connected and durable.
This same trajectory now includes scientific communities: convening clinicians, engineers, biologists, and trainees across disciplines, career stages, and geographies.
Yale Extracellular Vesicle Club
Founded a forum that brings clinicians, engineers, biologists, and trainees into the same conversation around extracellular-vesicle science.
Student Network on Extracellular Vesicles
Contribute to international seminars, networking, and career-development programming that connects early-career EV researchers across continents.
Mentoring across fields
Mentor trainees working across engineering, biology, and medicine—from lipid nanoprobes and EV isolation to membrane-on-a-chip and CNS-EV projects.