Lilangi Ediriwickrema

Dr. Lilangi Ediriwickrema is an Assistant Clinical Professor in Ophthalmology at the UCI School of Medicine Gavin Herbert Eye Institute. She is also a member of the Center for Translational Vision Research (CTVR), is Co-Vice Chair of the CTVR Committee of Women in Vision Science Research, and is a clinical researcher at UCI Beckman Laser Institute & Medical Clinic.

Dr. Ediriwickrema’s research interests include applying wide-field imaging strategies to interrogate oculofacial inflammatory processes towards identifying viable biomarkers and therapeutic endpoints.

She attended the University of Pennsylvania, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and her master’s degree in chemistry, as both a Roy and Diana Vagelos Scholar in the Molecular Life Sciences and Benjamin Franklin Scholar. Upon graduating, she received both a Fogarty International Training Award and National Institutes of Health Cancer Research Training Award, which supported research to study aptamer inhibition of viral entry and transmembrane protein mediated multi-drug resistance during chemotherapy treatment.

She subsequently attended the Yale University School of Medicine, during which she was awarded a Memorial Sloan Kettering Brain Tumor Center Summer Research Award and a joint Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Foundation for Fighting Blindness Fellowship. She completed her internship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and then completed an ophthalmology residency at the University of Southern California, where she was selected to be co-chief resident in her final year. She then completed a neuro-ophthalmology fellowship at the Johns Hopkins University Wilmer Eye Institute under the preceptorship of Dr. Neil Miller, and an ASOPRS Oculoplastics and Orbital Surgery Fellowship in the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of California, San Diego, under the preceptorship of Dr. Don Kikkawa, and was also a National Heed Scholar.

Her clinical and research interests include oculofacial plastic and reconstructive surgery, orbital disease, periocular and facial reconstruction, oculofacial widefield imaging, neuro-ophthalmology and neuroprotection.