Meet 2026 Award Recipient
Nithya Krishnamurthy
Nithya Krishnamurthy came to the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai from Yale University, where she studied the History of Science, Medicine, and Public Health and Global Health, bringing a deep commitment to understanding how historical, structural, and cultural forces shape health and healthcare.
At Icahn, Nithya served as a co-leader in the Academy for Medical Humanities and the Human Rights and Social Justice Program. She founded SAHAS (South Asian Health Advancement at Sinai) to promote preventive health education and blood pressure and skin cancer screenings for communities in the Bronx and Queens, and worked with the Mount Sinai Human Rights Partnership to help conduct evaluations for individuals seeking asylum. She led research with the Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery on gender-affirming hormone therapy and cancer screening disparities. She received the Oliver Goldsmith Award for Culturally Responsive Care for her service and research work.
Her scholarship spans palliative care, health equity, and global oncology, including work in Nepal to expand cancer screenings, and has resulted in over 50 peer-reviewed publications and presentations. Nithya would like to thank her family, fiancé, mentors, and friends for their unwavering support and guidance. Nithya will graduate with her MD degree and plans to continue her work at the intersection of clinical medicine, global oncology, and the medical humanities. She will be pursuing internal medicine residency at the University of California, San Francisco.