2026 Harry Goldblatt Award for New Investigators Lecturer – Monica M. Santisteban, PhD

Monica M. Santisteban, PhD

Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC)
Nashville, Tennessee

Mónica Santisteban, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where her research focuses on the early cellular and molecular mechanisms driving vascular contributions to cognitive impairment and dementia, with a particular focus on the brain borders.

Santisteban was born and raised in San José, Costa Rica. She completed her PhD under the mentorship of Mohan Raizada, PhD, at the University of Florida working on the role of brain-mediated hypertension, focusing on the contribution of sympathetic activation to modulating bone marrow cells and the intestinal microbiota in the mechanisms of hypertension. The brain is not only critical in driving the development and maintenance of hypertension, but it is also negatively affected by the elevation of blood pressure.

To expand her understanding of the detrimental effects of hypertension on the brain, she joined Costantino Iadecola, MD’s laboratory at Weill Cornell Medicine to pursue her postdoctoral training. Her postdoc research focused on the disruption of the blood-brain barrier in hypertension and the neurovascular and neuroimmune bases for cognitive dysfunction in salt-sensitive hypertension.