Dr. Vidhya Nair

Dr. Vidhya Nair is an Anatomical Pathologist with a special focus on Cardiovascular Pathology at The Ottawa Hospital, affiliated to the University of Ottawa since 2018.  She is the Department Chair of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and a Full Professor at the University of Ottawa. She is also the Department Head of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at TOH and CHEO and the Chief Medical Officer at EORLA.

Dr. Nair moved to Canada in 2002 after completing her medical training and residency in Anatomical Pathology in India. She subsequently completed her residency in Anatomical Pathology at the University of Toronto and earned FRCPC (Pathology) from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. She then completed a Fellowship in Cardiovascular Pathology under the mentorship of Dr. Jagdish Butany from the University of Toronto.

Prior to moving to Ottawa, Dr. Nair was a staff pathologist at Hamilton Health Sciences and an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at McMaster University. She was the Director of the Residency Training Program for General Pathology for the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada (RCPSC) at McMaster University (2011-2018). She was one of the founding members in designing the “Competence-By-Design” based General Pathology curriculum for the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons Canada. She was also part of a three-member committee that developed the Competency Model document in Cardiovascular Pathology for the College of American Pathologists organization. She is an invited content developer for the Kuwait Institute for Medical Specialization -Royal College Histopathology & Cytology Examinations, an academic outreach program supported by the Royal College Canada International.

Dr. Nair is a Clinical Investigator at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, and her current research interests include cardiac transplant biopsies for rejection, temporal artery biopsies, and the molecular characteristics of sudden cardiac death. She has been a Co-Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator on research grants funded by the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada and the Canadian Diabetic Association. She has authored eight book chapters and over sixty peer-reviewed manuscripts. She was a member of the Executive committee of the International Society for Cardiovascular Pathology. She is a member of the Editorial board of the Journal of Cardiovascular Pathology, and the Section Editor of Human Pathology Case reports.

She is the recipient of several awards, including the Young Investigators’ Award in 2010 from the Society for Cardiovascular Pathology, the Excellence in Teaching Award in 2017 by the Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine, the award for outstanding contribution to the General Pathology Program, McMaster University and inaugural recipient of the 2020 Margaret Billingham Award for the most important review in Cardiovascular Pathology in 2020 by the Society for Cardiovascular Pathology.

Last updated on: July 15th, 2024