Atul Maheshwari, M.D. ’06, Fel. ’12, is an associate professor in the departments of Neurology and Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine and sees patients at Baylor St. Lukes Medical Center, the Harris Health Smith Clinic and Ben Taub Hospital.
Dr. Maheshwari’s path to medical school began at Rice University, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in biology and psychology and graduated magna cum laude in 2002. He chose to pursue his medical degree at Baylor College of Medicine, where he served on the Curriculum Committee and as a neurology teaching assistant, foreshadowing his future pursuit of academic neurology. He then completed his internship in medicine at Harvard Medical School/Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, followed by a neurology residency at Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts General Hospital/Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, where he served as chief resident in his final year.
An interest in basic science research brought Dr. Maheshwari back to Baylor to complete a National Institutes of Health T32-sponsored research fellowship under the mentorship of Jeffrey Noebels, M.D., Ph.D., professor and the Cullen Trust for Health Care Endowed Chair in Neurogenetics. After completing that fellowship, Dr. Maheshwari completed a clinical neurophysiology fellowship.
In 2012, he joined the Department of Neurology at Baylor as an assistant professor. His clinical interests in cortical neurophysiology have since guided his research and educational endeavors. Dr. Maheshwari has been awarded a National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke K08 Career Development Grant (2016 – 2021), a Brain & Behavior Research Foundation NARSAD Young Investigator Award (2018 – 2020), and the Nancy Chang, Ph.D., Award for Research Excellence (2020 – 2021). These awards have helped Dr. Maheshwari earn a National Institute of Mental Health R56 Grant, supporting a translational research laboratory studying both epilepsy and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Dr. Maheshwari pays it forward as the course director for the medical student Nervous System Course and as program director for the Clinical Neurophysiology Fellowship Program at Baylor. These educational efforts have also been rewarded with the Norton Rose Fulbright Faculty Excellence Award in two categories: Teaching and Evaluation in 2019 and Development of Enduring Educational Materials in 2020. For the last 3 years, he has been further contributing to undergraduate medical education as the councilor for the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Society and as a member for the Clinical Curriculum Renewal Workgroup. In 2023, he was appointed as director of Curriculum at Baylor to help usher in a new era of curriculum reform.
