By Liz Torrey

Fadi N. Salloum, Ph.D., FAHA, has been honored with a 2025 Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV). Created in 1987, the Outstanding Faculty Awards recognize superior achievements in teaching, research, and public service, and are the commonwealth’s highest honor for faculty at Virginia’s institutions of higher education.  

Salloum has served on the faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University for 16 years and is currently the associate director of research mentoring and preclinical science at the VCU Health Pauley Heart Center, as well as the Natalie N. and John R. Congdon Endowed Chair in Cardiology and associate chair for research within the VCU School of Medicine’s Department of Internal Medicine. He is the first faculty member of the VCU Division of Cardiology to receive this award, and the sixth member of the Department of Internal Medicine to receive this award, since its inception.

Salloum, who also undertook his doctoral and postdoctoral training at VCU, was initially nominated for the Outstanding Faculty Award by Clive Baumgarten, Ph.D., Distinguished Career Professor Emeritus and former interim chair of VCU’s Department of Physiology and Biophysics, a nomination that was supported by the Department of Internal Medicine, the School of Medicine and ultimately VCU.

The award recognizes Salloum’s exceptional contributions to cardiovascular research and exceptional commitment to teaching, mentoring, and training the next generation of scientists and physician-scientists.  

“Dr. Salloum is the consummate compassionate cardiovascular research scientist,” said Greg Hundley, M.D., director of the Pauley Heart Center. “His research has led to significant advances in cardiovascular medicine. We are most fortunate to have the opportunity to work with him at VCU and VCU Health.” 

Salloum’s research focuses on the molecular and cellular mechanisms that are responsible for cardiac inflammation, injury (as occurs during and after a heart attack, for example), and heart failure. He originally emigrated to the United States from Beirut with the intention to become a heart surgeon.  

Salloum and his family at the 2025 Outstanding Faculty Awards. (Contributed photo)

“From what my parents tell me, from before I can even remember, I was always fascinated with the heart,” Salloum said. “I came to VCU’s School of Medicine – MCV at the time – because of the legacy of Lower and the reputation of the heart transplant program."

But upon arrival at VCU, Salloum began working in a VCU research lab, fell in love with cardiovascular research, and ultimately ended up pursuing his PhD in physiology.

“I learned a lot about myself when I first came to VCU – and ultimately, I got to apply my surgical interests in a different way,” Salloum noted. “I now do very meticulous heart surgeries in animal models that recapitulate the human condition.” 

According to his award nomination packet, Salloum has made “exceptional scholarly contributions in translational studies on protecting the heart from injury [that] are recognized nationally and internationally,” including “124 peer-reviewed full-length publications and 127 abstracts presented at scientific conferences that have been cited over 12,000 times.” His current research on managing the cardiac toxicities of cancer therapy is funded by a prestigious seven-year R35 grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. When he first received his R35 funding in 2021, his was the first NHLBI R35 grant ever awarded to a Virginia institution of higher education, and one of only two awarded to Virginia institutions to date. 

Salloum is also helping to lead the research being done at Pauley through a Strategically Focused Research Network grant funded by the American Heart Association. The SFRN is a multi-institution project led by VCU that is studying the effects of chronic psychosocial stress on cardiovascular health; Salloum is the principal investigator of a basic science project that is examining how cancer treatments may exacerbate the effects of chronic stress on cardiac function in cancer survivors, and the role of inflammation and mitochondrial dysfunction in this process.  

Though Salloum's national and international reputation is rooted in his research, he may be best known at VCU for his deep and abiding commitment to exceptional teaching and mentoring. He teaches a variety of graduate-level physiology courses within the VCU School of Medicine, and his nomination packet notes that he is “an exceptionally effective classroom teacher who is beloved by students and consistently receives superb student evaluations.” To date, he has trained four Ph.D., three MD-PhD, and five master’s students, and has mentored 11 postdoctoral research fellows, 14 cardiology fellows in basic/translational research, and 14 undergraduate students in his lab.  

“There’s a lot of teaching that goes into the research that we do in the lab,” Salloum said. “Everything from teaching basic approaches to research – how to ask a question, how to evaluate the significance of a question as it pertains to the clinical world or health concerns, and what the necessary steps are to get to an answer – to how to add in conceptual and technical innovation to a project. We’re also doing skill training – how to perform echocardiography on animals, for example, or how to measure blood pressure in mice using a tail cuff – and teaching how to interpret the data that is gathered.” 

I continue this mentorship even as researchers become principal investigators in their own lab because I believe mentorship is a lifelong commitment. And it’s not just me offering something to them – I also learn a lot from mentees.

Fadi N. Salloum, Ph.D., FAHA, associate director of research mentoring and preclinical science at VCU Health Pauley Heart Center

Salloum’s three essential components of quality mentoring are presence, communication, and trust. 

“Traditionally, you might see an established researcher less often in the lab and more often going to a lot of conferences or in their office, working on papers and grant proposals – which are very important,” Salloum said. “But I think being present in a lab really makes a lot of difference to trainees and mentees. Knowing that your [principal investigator] is present and there for you and having that support is really important. The mentee needs to know that the mentor really cares about them and their success and is there for them in a selfless way. That’s very, very important to developing trust.” 

Communication drives trust in a different way. “If something seems to have been misinterpreted or misunderstood, the best way to solve that is by addressing it right away in an open and honest way,” he continued. “Being very transparent and having bidirectional communication is key to keeping the mentoring relationship strong.” 

Salloum has infused these principles into a mentoring training program he founded with his VCU colleagues: Advanced Research Mentoring (or “ARM” for short). The program is based on curricula from the Center for Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research at the University of Wisconsin, where Salloum underwent training to become a mentoring facilitator. The VCU School of Medicine’s ARM program, which is now run by the Office of Faculty Development, helps faculty develop essential skills for trainee mentoring, such as effective communication, empathetic listening, and goal development. 

In his role as director of research mentoring and preclinical science with the Pauley Heart Center, Salloum also oversees the research activities and grant applications of Pauley’s more junior faculty and early-career researchers. Salloum and Hundley hold weekly individual and small group discussion sessions with these investigators, some of whom were trained in Salloum’s lab. 

“I continue this mentorship even as researchers become principal investigators in their own lab because I believe mentorship is a lifelong commitment,” Salloum said. “And it’s not just me offering something to them – I also learn a lot from mentees.” 

Salloum has himself experienced the benefits of persistent mentorship. He cites Baumgarten – the professor who initially nominated him for the Outstanding Faculty Award –  as one of his favorite professors and lifelong mentors, from the earliest days of working toward his PhD in physiology through his appointment to VCU’s cardiology faculty in 2009 and beyond. 

“One of our main goals at VCU is to train the next generation of academic researchers and physician-scientists,” Salloum said. “So, I do everything I can for my mentees to make sure that they succeed, and hopefully also give them an illustration of what their career would look like in the future.” 

Offering hope to people with heart disease. Learn more about VCU Health Pauley Heart Center.

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