Krishni Wijesooriya, PhD
In a student survey conducted by the UVA Career Center, Professor Krishni Wijesooriya, PhD, in the Department of Radiation Oncology and Department of Physics, was identified by one or more rising second-year through fourth-year students as the most influential person in their career development in the past year. Survey responses also identified her as “someone who has gone above and beyond to offer selfless help and guidance to UVA students.” Dr. Wijesooriya has mentored medical physicists, medical and medical physics residents, medical students, undergraduates, and graduate students for the past 15 years at UVA. Many of her past mentees have gone on to become medical physicists and faculty members at some of the top hospitals and universities in the world.
Dr. Wijesooriya is a medical physicist with research interests in new cancer treatment techniques, novel imaging techniques for tumor localization and delineation, simulation modeling, and treatment plan optimization methods to reduce immune suppression during radiation therapy. She was the principal investigator of an NCI funded clinical trial at the UVA Cancer Center to implement a predictive model for immune suppression, leading the world’s first randomized clinical trial to proactively reduce immune suppression via treatment planning in early stage lung cancer patients. This work received the “Best in Physics (therapy)” award at the 2023 annual American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) meeting. She has research experience in predictive modeling, AI and radiomic feature-based early detection of tumors, GEANT4 simulations, and Varian Amazon cloud based Virtual linac simulations.
See the complete list of faculty and staff commended by the UVA Career Center.
Filed Under: Faculty, Honors & Awards