Aravind Krishnan, MD Awarded Prestigious TSMA Trainee Teaching Award

by Lynn Nichols
March 7, 2024

Once a year, the Thoracic Surgery Medical Student Association (TSMA) selects two outstanding residents or fellows in cardiothoracic surgery to receive the TSMA Trainee Teaching Award. We’re thrilled that this year’s pick is one of our own - Aravind Krishnan, MD. Dr. Krishnan is in his fourth year of cardiothoracic surgery residency and is currently completing his mentored post-doctoral research fellowship.

Medical students from across the nation who rotate in for training nominated Dr. Krishnan for demonstrating remarkable interest in teaching and mentoring. Dr. Krishnan is honored to be this year’s recipient.

“Winning this award is a way for me to pay forward the incredible generosity of my own mentors through the years, who sacrificed their precious time to invest in my growth,” he says. 

As a mentor, Dr. Krishnan focuses on helping students develop good habits and fundamentals in surgical procedures, as well as teaching them the utmost importance of putting patients first. He credits Brandon Guenthart, MD, Clinical Assistant Professor with the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Stanford University, for demonstrating this to him as a young resident, saying that Dr. Guenthart always “did the right thing for patients every time, no matter how late it was, how tired he was, or how difficult the task was.” It’s a value that he passes on as the nation’s TSMA Teaching Award recipient.

Today, Dr. Krishnan is working with his closest current mentor - JW MacArthur, MD, Assistant Professor, in his research laboratory studying heart and lung transplantation. It was his dream as a medical student to match at Stanford and join Dr. MacArthur in his lab. “I was immediately drawn to all the characteristics he expressed that I hoped to demonstrate as a cardiac surgeon: technical mastery, unwavering dedication to patient care, and passion.” He appreciates Dr. MacArthur’s “intense intentionality” as a mentor - something he models with his own medical students.

Dr. Krishnan sees the TSMA Teaching Award as a product of an academic village - medical school at Johns Hopkins and now cardiothoracic surgery residency at Stanford. Help us congratulate Dr. Krishnan on this prestigious award.