Ashani T. Weeraratna, Ph.D.

Dr. Weeraratna is the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Cancer Biology, E.V. McCollum Chair of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, as well as the Associate Director for Laboratory Research at the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She is a Past President of the Society for Melanoma Research, and was recently appointed by President Biden as a member of the National Cancer Advisory Board. Prior to joining Johns Hopkins, she was the Ira Brind Professor and Co-Program Leader, Immunology, Microenvironment & Metastasis Program Member at the Wistar Institute. Born in Sri Lanka and raised in Lesotho in Southern Africa, Weeraratna first came to the United States in 1988 to study biology at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. She earned a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Oncology at the Department of Pharmacology of George Washington University Medical Center. From 1998 to 2000, she was a post-doctoral fellow at The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins Oncology Center, before joining the National Human Genome Research Institute as a staff scientist. In 2003, she moved to the National Institute on Aging, where she started her own research program, before joining the Wistar Institute from 2011-2019. 

Dr. Weeraratna is an expert in melanoma metastasis, Wnt signaling, and aging, and her research focuses heavily on the effects of the tumor microenvironment on metastasis and therapy resistance. She is one of the first to study how the aging microenvironment guides metastasis and therapy resistance in melanoma. For this innovative work, she was selected by Nature to be a part of their “Milestones in Cancer Research” video series and in 2021 the NCI selected her as one of their “Top 5 Cancer Researchers Accelerating Cancer Research Into the Future”. Moreover, the quality and impact of Dr. Weeraratna’s research is further recognized by the award of numerous peer-reviewed grants and awards.

Finally, Dr. Weeraratna has been a champion of increasing diversity for many years, and this is evident in her writings which call for gender and racial equity (e.g., Nature, Nature Medicine, Nature Reviews in Cancer, Cancer Cell and Cancer Discovery). She mentors junior faculty all over the world, and is spearheading efforts to increase the diversity among the Hopkins faculty. In her own department she has successfully implemented strategies to increase diversity both through faculty recruitment, and in her student body. She has written a book for the lay public called “Is Cancer Inevitable?” meant to highlight the progress made in the field, and the importance of diversity in cancer research. She is also heavily invested in Public Health, with multiple calls for sun protection and awareness through her social media presence, and community outreach.