evidence: Sri Lanka’s Piyumi Wijesekera is among NASA’s four-member new volunteer crew selected to participate in a simulated mission to Mars within a habitat at the agency’s Johnson Space Centre in Houston. [...] Piyumi Wijesekara is a postdoctoral research scientist in the Radiation Biophysics Laboratory at NASA Ames Research Centre in California’s Silicon Valley. Her research focuses on developing tissue models to investigate the effects of spaceflight stressors, including ionising radiation and lunar dust on the human respiratory system. [...] Wijesekara currently lives in San Francisco. She enjoys spending time with family and friends, running along the San Francisco Bay, reading, hiking, volunteering at the food pantry, and attending concerts and musicals.