Nikhil Pai honoured with 2024 Canadian Nutrition Society’s Young Investigator Award for Outstanding Research

Dr. Nikhil Pai, associate professor of pediatrics, is the 2024 Canadian Nutrition Society’s (CNS) Young Investigator Award recipient for Outstanding Research. This annual award recognizes a Canadian individual who has made an outstanding contribution to research in nutrition.

Pai, known to be strongly committed to bridging the gap between research and evidence-based clinical practice, heads a leading-edge nutrition-focused research program, attracting competitive national funding.

Working with multi-disciplinary investigators across the university and Canada, he is advancing a collaborative vision for nutrition research with immediate application to advancing patient care.

As this year’s recipient, Pai will be honoured and presented with a plaque and monetary award at the 2024 CNS-SCN Annual Conference from May 2 to 4, 2024, in Edmonton, Alberta.

“I’m tremendously honoured and motivated to keep working hard,” Pai said. “Awards like this do a lot to give us some wind in our sails as clinician-researchers.”

Professor of pediatrics, Stephanie Atkinson, has known Pai since he was a medical student at McMaster, and has watched him grow and blossom into a pioneering and accomplished clinician-scientist.

“His meteoric rise in advancing nutrition through his research with application to the clinical practice of pediatric gastroenterology and other sub-specialties, along with his proven dedication to collaborating on research and knowledge translation activities in the field locally, nationally, and indeed internationally, unreservedly makes him worthy of being recognized with the CNS award for Young Investigators,” she said.

For other young investigators who aspire to excel in research, Pai advises to build your network, always be ready for the next grant application, and apply the same commitment to research as clinical work.

“Research is not a self-serving pursuit. Believe that your time spent analyzing data will genuinely help your patients and colleagues, then make the time to do it well. It’s another way of helping patients,” Pai said.