Please join us in congratulating Lakshmi Santhanam, PhD, for her appointment to the position of Vice Chair of Research in the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine, effective July 1, 2025. Please also join us in expressing our sincere gratitude to Sujatha Kannan, MBBS, for her remarkable leadership, poise, and acumen in this role and for all the guidance she provides during this transition.

Dr. Santhanam earned her Bachelor of Technology in Chemical and Bio Engineering from the Regional Engineering College in Jalandhar, India, where she was a gold medalist and university-wide valedictorian out of a class of over 10,000 students. She then earned her PhD in Chemical Engineering from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. After completing postdoctoral fellowships in cardiology, ACCM, and biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Santhanam joined ACCM as faculty in 2009. Dr. Santhanam is currently an Associate Professor in ACCM with joint appointments in the Department of Biomedical Engineering in the School of Medicine and the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in the Whiting School of Engineering. In 2024, she became the Associate Director for Curriculum and Training in the Graduate Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine.

Dr. Santhanam is a basic scientist with a strong track record of interdisciplinary research. Her research focuses on the mechanical decline of vasculature with aging and on comorbidities such as atherosclerosis, hypertension, and obesity. She is a highly productive scientist who has maintained continuous funding from industry, foundations, and the National Institutes of Health and has built strong local, national, and international collaborations. Dr. Santhanam also has a strong record of mentoring scientists spanning the entire range of academic stages, including high school students, undergraduates, Masters students, postdoctoral fellows, and junior faculty. Of her 89 publications, 87 include her mentees as first or even senior authors. Her experiences uniquely position her to lead our research directions with a translational and interdisciplinary focus, as well as provide the support needed to build networks and strong foundations for future scientists and leaders.

In her role as Vice Chair of Research, Dr. Santhanam will provide leadership for our research enterprise, develop a strategic vision to keep our department at the forefront of research and training, and provide operational oversight to our department s extensive research activities. In addition to enriching our existing research programs, she will lead the development and execution of a strategic plan for mentorship, recruitment, retention, and advancement of clinical, translational, and basic scientists. In serving on the ACCM leadership committee, she will ensure that the research infrastructure is robust to meet ongoing and future needs. She will also provide a strong, regulatory-compliant structure to manage and grow research collaborations across ACCM, with key areas of focus on promoting timely collaborations between our basic science and clinical areas, especially in the spaces of AI and large data.

We are thrilled that Dr. Santhanam has accepted this position and look forward to her leadership in advancing the ACCM research enterprise.