Dr. Nikhil Pai is an associate Professor of Pediatrics (Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition) at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. His clinical expertise spans pediatric intestinal failure/short bowel syndrome (SBS), complex pediatric nutritional disorders, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), and metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD). He serves as a core faculty member at Clinical Futures, a CHOP Research Institute Center of Emphasis. He is also affiliated with the CHOP Center for Microbial Medicine, and the University of Pennsylvania Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics, and the CHOP Research Institute.

Before joining CHOP, Dr. Pai spent over 9 years as an attending pediatric gastroenterologist at McMaster Children’s Hospital in Hamilton, Ontario, where he provided broad-based pediatric GI care across the spectrum of pediatric gastrointestinal diseases. Dr. Pai received his medical degree from the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster University. He completed his residency in Pediatrics at the Hospital for Sick Children (University of Toronto). His fellowship in Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology & Nutrition was completed at Boston Children's Hospital.

Dr. Pai's interests include pediatric nutrition, intestinal failure, general pediatric gastroenterology and obesity medicine. He led a translational research program focused on microbiome-host interactions, metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD), and novel microbiome-based therapeutics for chronic gastrointestinal disorders in children. Dri. Pai developed the first pediatric donor fecal microbiota transplant (FMT) stool bank in Canada, and is leading the development of CHOP’s pediatric FMT stool bank—the first of its kind in the United States.