Nalini Vadivelu

Nalini Vadivelu is a professor emeritus of anesthesiology at Yale School of Medicine and Yale New Haven Hospital. She received her medical degree from Christian Medical College in 1978 and completed a rotating internship at Christian Medical College and Hospital in India. She received a Doctor of Medicine in biochemistry from Jawaharial Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research in Pondicherry, India, in 1985. Later, Dr. Vadivelu completed a second residency in anesthesiology at the University of Southern California and a pain management fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. In 2002, Dr. Vadivelu joined the Yale School of Medicine faculty. While at Yale, she has been instrumental in the development of a clinical program for Ambulatory Pain Control at the Ambulatory Surgery Center and the incorporation of pain education into the Yale Medical School curriculum with special emphasis on ambulatory pain management.

Dr. Vadivelu has made significant contributions to scientific literature in the fields of pain management and substance abuse. She served as a co-editor of numerous medical texts published by Springer as well as Oxford University Press, including Essentials of Pain Management (2011) and Pain Control in Ambulatory Surgery Centers (2021). She has also invented two medical devices to improve safety in anesthesia, for which she has eighteen patents worldwide. The invented medical devices are a novel laryngeal mask airway and a new nasogastric tube, both of which have led to multiple patents in several countries.