Nicole Sandhu, MD, PhD

Governance Chair 2022 – 2023

Nicole P. Sandhu, MD, PhD, FACP, FAMWA, the 2020-2021President of AMWA, is a board certified internist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN where she has been in practice for nearly 16 years. She spends the majority of her clinical time seeing patients with breast cancer, high risk patients, and patients with benign breast health concerns in the Breast Diagnostic Clinic, where she works with a team of multidisciplinary physicians and allied health staff. She continues to practice general internal medicine, participating in the evaluation and care of patients with complex medical issues. Her academic interests and research primarily focus on the cardiovascular impact of cancer-related therapy. She previously served as a scientific member of the Mayo Clinic Institutional Review Board, serves as co-chair of the Breast Clinic Research Committee and as a member of the General Internal Medicine Research Committee, and has been Principle Investigator or Co-Investigator on numerous research protocols. She became the Program Director for the Women’s Health Fellowship in 2009 and subsequently developed and served as the Program Director for the General Internal Medicine Fellowship for 10 years. Through her role as Program Director, Dr. Sandhu developed and implemented new curricula. She is involved in the education, supervision, and mentoring of medical students, residents, and fellows, and has mentored undergraduate and graduate students. She has been named as a top educator in the Internal Medicine residency program numerous times. Dr. Sandhu has coauthored 40 peer-reviewed publications and 5 medical textbook chapters, has served as course co-director for the Mayo Clinic Internal Medicine Board Review Course and associate editor of the Mayo Clinic Internal Medicine Board Review textbook, and has presented at numerous regional, national, and international conferences.

After graduating from the University of Minnesota Medical School in 2001, Dr. Sandhu completed her residency in Internal Medicine at the Mayo Clinic School of Graduate Medical Education in 2004 and was selected as the 2004 recipient of the LeAnne McCaffrey Women in Medicine Award. Prior to medical school, Dr. Sandhu completed her PhD in molecular biology at the Mayo Clinic Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science under the mentorship of Thomas Spelsberg, PhD, during which she cloned and characterized the gene for chicken oviduct receptor binding factor, a nuclear matrix protein important for specificity of hormone receptor binding to DNA targets.

Dr. Sandhu has been an active member of AMWA since 2009. She has served as Co-Chair and Chair of the Membership Committee, and Co-Chair of the Breast Cancer Task Force, and has served as a member of the Governance Committee. Prior to becoming President-Elect in 2019, she served on the Board of Directors.

In addition to AMWA, Dr. Sandhu is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians (ACP), and is a member of the Society of General Internal Medicine, and the National Consortium of Breast Centers (formerly the American Society of Breast Diseases).

Dr. Sandhu currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Rochester, MN Diversity Council, to which she was elected in 2017. She is engaged in local community efforts related to diversity and inclusion, as well as efforts at Mayo Clinic, where she is a member of the General Internal Medicine Diversity and Inclusion Planning Team. She has previously been named a Diversity Champion at Mayo Clinic. During her year as president, Dr. Sandhu plans to focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion with an emphasis on health equity.

On a personal level, Dr. Sandhu is the very proud mother of two wonderful daughters, Amrit (currently completing her sophomore year at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities where she is majoring in Global Studies, minoring in Public Health and Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, and is considering medical school) and Simran (an avid artist and animal lover who is completing her freshman year in high school in Rochester). Both are members of the AMWA premedical student division. While Dr. Sandhu derives joy from her clinical practice where she feels privileged and humbled to be trusted by her patients to care for them at their most vulnerable, she considers her greatest accomplishment to be raising two strong, independent young women who speak out against injustice and intolerance wherever they see it and want to do their part to change the world for the better.

Dr. Sandhu is very grateful and humbled to have been selected by her fellow members to lead AMWA, and she continues to be delighted and fulfilled to build relationships with women physicians across the US and to participate in mentoring the next generation of women physicians through AMWA, the oldest organization for women in medicine in the US.