Rate My Professor Nazanin Rajai

Nazanin Rajai, M.D., M.P.H., serves as a Research Fellow in the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. She earned her medical degree from Tehran University of Medical Sciences in Iran and completed internal medicine residency training, including as a PGY-2 resident at Stamford Hospital affiliated with Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. Her academic background also includes training in public health.

Dr. Rajai’s research focuses on cardiovascular disease risk stratification, epidemiology, and the intersection of social determinants of health with cardiac outcomes. Key areas of her work include the use of artificial intelligence-enabled electrocardiography to assess biological cardiac age, the effects of social isolation on cardiovascular aging and mortality, peripheral endothelial dysfunction, and related biomarkers. In 2024, she led a study published in JACC: Advances examining the association between social isolation and age-gap determined by AI-ECG, finding that greater social isolation correlates with accelerated cardiac aging and higher all-cause mortality risk. Additional publications include a 2023 paper in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology on coronary microvascular dysfunction as a predictor of cancer in patients with non-obstructive coronary artery disease, a 2020 study on national trends in lung cancer incidence and mortality in Iran, and earlier work on cardiovascular complications of COVID-19. Her contributions appear in journals such as Mayo Clinic Proceedings and the Journal of the American Heart Association. Dr. Rajai has collaborated on projects involving endothelial function, physical training effects on biomarkers, and neighborhood-level social drivers of health. She maintains an active research profile with verified affiliation at Mayo Clinic and has co-authored numerous peer-reviewed articles since 2018.