Editor’s note: This story is part of a series of profiles of notable spring 2025 graduates.
Megha Pillai has had medical school on her mind since the start of her bachelor’s degree.
The research and work experiences she’s had since then have only affirmed that medical school is right for her, though they’ve changed the reason why.
“I think initially, I wanted to become a doctor so I could help people in this direct way. But trying to find ways to lessen the health disparities that women face has become more of a priority,” said Pillai, who is graduating this May from Arizona State University with a bachelor's degree in biology with a concentration in biomedical sciences.
She specifically became interested in women’s health disparities through the research she did for her Barrett, The Honors College thesis.
She completed that research writing for the Embryo Project Encyclopedia, an online open-access resource with thousands of explanatory articles on topics related to embryology, development and reproduction. Megha joined the Embryo Project’s team with an interest in creating public resources about medical topics, though she wasn’t sure exactly what she wanted to write about.
“As I was looking for things to write about, menopause came up as an underrepresented subject,” Pillai explains. “There weren’t even articles on the Embryo Project yet, and in general, there aren’t a lot of resources out there for menopausal women. So, I thought I would take the time to create resources for that through the Embryo Project.”
Pillai authored 11 articles for the Embryo Project, seven of which were about menopause — the stage of life that women undergo when they stop menstruating. One of those articles covers the science and history of hormone replacement therapy (HRT), which is often used to treat menopause symptoms. Another takes a sweeping look at how scientists have understood menopause from the fourth century BCE until the modern day. Pillai compiled those articles and added to them for her honor’s thesis, which reflects on how little research is done on menopause and how little training medical students get on how to treat it.
“There’s a big knowledge gap with menopausal women knowing much about menopause itself, which is kind of crazy considering how many people have to experience it. I found out that even in 2025, doctors don’t provide adequate care for menopausal women, and a lot of menopausal women don’t realize there are treatments for some of the symptoms they experience. Not everyone experiences symptoms during menopause, but some of them can be pretty bad and can interfere with everyday life,” Pillai says.
That lack of knowledge motivated Pillai to not only create public materials for the topic, but pursue a master’s degree to continue that work.
This fall, she will join the biology and society program as an accelerated master’s student. She hopes to create more resources on menopause as well as postmenopause to educate people who might experience it.
Her commitment to reducing knowledge disparities extends into her extracurriculars. Pillai serves as the president of the SOLS Ambassadors Club, which helps undergraduates in the School of Life Sciences learn how to network, find research and internship experiences, and think through their career choices. With whatever spare time she has left, Pillai also volunteers at an after-school program with A New Leaf, an organization dedicated to helping unhoused people and victims of domestic violence. There, Pillai helps care for kids.
Though she’s enjoyed getting into research, Pillai still plans on going to medical school. In 2022, she participated in the Overlook Summer Internship Program, which allowed her to shadow different medical practitioners across the state of New Jersey. That experience, she shares, proved to her that she did want to become a doctor.
“I loved seeing patient-physician interactions. I saw good ones, and I saw bad ones, but those good ones made me sure that I wanted to pursue medicine. I feel like you don’t see that kind of relationship in any other job, where you know you’re going to help the person right in front of you.”
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