Senior Circuit: Achini Bandara
It’s a long way from Sri Lanka to Spartanburg. Wofford senior Achini Bandara has certainly enjoyed it, though. She actually considers Zimbabwe home, having grown up there, but her journey began in Kandy, Sri Lanka, and took her to Lexington, S.C.
While looking for a college, Bandara was searching for chemistry in more ways than one. She wanted the right courses in that subject, but the right fit socially as well. A junior scholar, she said choosing Wofford College was easy.
“I got a great scholarship from here, but it was a great fit for me, anyways,” she says.
Involved with the campus environmental group Planeteers, she is also a resident advisor, the vice president of the American Chemical Society, and she has led a group that completed Wofford’s first ever environmental audit. She was also a Success Initiative Student Director recently.
She is still a chemistry major, but has added a minor in mathematics along the way. She plans to graduate in biomedical chemistry next fall and intends to stay in academia.
“I’d like to work on infectious disease research,” says Bandara, who once worked at a hospital in Malawi watching crude surgeries and natural deliveries.