After she graduates from the University of Virginia in May in just two years, Natasha Dodamgoda will look forward to becoming the first doctor in her family.
Raised in a Sri Lankan family in Chesapeake, she said she was taught the value of education. “Education has always been a priority in our house, and going to medical school is one of the highest educations you can get. So, I really want to do that to make my parents and my grandmother proud,” she said.
Dodamgoda will graduate with a Bachelor of Science degree in biology and continue working at UVA as a researcher during a gap year while she applies to medical school. During both of her undergraduate years, she was an undergraduate research assistant in chemistry professor David Cafiso’s research lab studying the structure of membrane proteins.
Dodamgoda plans to become the first doctor in her family. (Photo by Lathan Goumas, University Communications)
She began that work after meeting Viranga Wimalasiri, then a doctoral candidate in UVA's chemistry department. “He really took me under his wing and let me shadow him in the lab from my first semester,” she said.
Wimalasiri remembers both he and his adviser, David Cafiso, being impressed with Dodamgoda. Before long, she was assisting with lab work and handling her own projects.
“She’s one of the smartest and most dedicated women I’ve met and I’m very proud to be her mentor in lab work,” Wimalasiri said.
Dodamgoda is the first person in her family to go to college straight out of high school, so she “didn’t know much about applying to college.” But she fell in love with UVA on a visit and was ecstatic to be accepted.
“Making sure my grandmother gets to see all this happen is another reason I wanted to graduate early,” she said. “But I wasn’t set on doing it in two years. It just kind of happened that way.”
She entered UVA with 35 Advanced Placement credits from high school, allowing her to take upper-level classes her first year. After her first year, she took summer classes at Old Dominion University and found she was making rapid progress toward finishing her degree.
Although she is juggling a lot, Dodamgoda said she focuses on “staying in the present moment. It’s easy to get caught up in planning every step or worrying about the future, but if you just stay grounded, things tend to work out.”
Working in the lab became a nice break from studying and a chance for Dodamgoda to immerse herself in tasks she loved. “It actually even made me consider going to graduate school instead of medical school for a while, but then I realized I could just keep doing research as a doctor, and that felt like the best of both worlds.”
Dodamgoda, who grew up in Chesapeake with her sisters, their parents and grandmother, says education was always emphasized at home. (Contributed photo)
Last spring, she earned her EMT certification, commuting from UVA to Virginia Beach every other week for training. After graduation, she will continue working in the lab and as an EMT, while applying to medical school.
Looking back, Dodamgoda said her biggest challenge coming to UVA was leaving home to start college. “I’m the oldest sibling, so I was the first one to go. That meant saying goodbye to my parents and my little sisters and even my dog, and I was really scared to meet my roommate and new people.”
But she ended up becoming good friends with her roommate, who she lived with both years. And this year, she was able to spend time with her younger sister, who is a first-year student.
