It all comes back to mentorship and collaboration for Madhur

Meena S. Madhur, MD, PhD has desired to contribute beyond the lab throughout her career as a researcher in hypertension. 

The impact of her findings is important, but going beyond that to affect the wider community, make advancements and create learning opportunities for other researchers on her teams has always been equally important to Madhur. 

Mentorship and collaboration mean a lot to Madhur, the John B. Hickam Scholar in Medicine and division chief of clinical pharmacology. She credits both for helping advance her career. 

Madhur’s journey began at Duke University, where she graduated summa cum laude with double majors in biomedical engineering and biology. From there, she moved on to the University of Virginia, earning her combined MD/PhD degrees. 

Her interest in hypertension came from her work as a postdoctoral fellow at Emory University with a focus on the immune cells in hypertension. There she was mentored by David Harrison, M.D., who had been researching hypertension for years. 

“This was a relatively new field at the time,” Madhur said. “We were just starting to understand that hypertension is an inflammatory disease, and the immune system plays an important role in that.” 

Ever since, Madhur’s research has focused on the role of T cells, a type of white blood cell called lymphocytes, and how they contribute to hypertension, with the goal of finding new targets for treating high blood pressure. 

This work has taken Madhur from Emory to the Vanderbilt University Medical Center and now to her current position at the IU School of Medicine.  

Among the multiple honors she has received, Madhur was named the 2024 recipient of the Mid-Career Award for Research Excellence from the American Heart Association’s Council on Hypertension. 

Research awards tend to be concentrated on early and late career achievements, Madhur said, so it was nice to have such an honor at this point in her career. Speaking at a meeting of the Council on Hypertension where she received the award, Madhur highlighted lessons she has learned along the way. 

“My first lesson was to find good mentors,” Madhur said. “My second lesson was to find good collaborators. Lesson number three was making sure that we look for human relevance in our work.” 

Madhur has found valued collaborators in her work at the IU School of Medicine and has sought to be a good mentor herself. When asked about her favorite part of working at IU, she said it’s the people she works alongside. 

“My trainees, my colleagues, my admin team, my department chair — I just think the people here are so passionate, collaborative and happy to be at work,” Madhur said.