Nadia Lunardi, MD
Critical Care Medicine
Additional Locations
Bio & Overview
Nadia Lunardi, MD, PhD, is a general and critical care anesthesiologist and an active clinician-scientist. She cares for a wide range of patients in the operating room, including those undergoing abdominal, ear, nose and throat, gynecological, neurosurgical, orthopedic and urological procedures. In the intensive care unit, she oversees patients having cardiac, thoracic and vascular surgery, including those receiving heart and lung transplantation, and patients needing extracorporeal membrane oxygenation support.
Lunardi is the principal investigator of a translational research laboratory in the Department of Anesthesiology. Her research focuses on understanding how anesthetic drugs impact brain function, particularly in the developing and aging brain. She has received national recognition for her research efforts, including a mentored research award from the International Anesthesia Research Society in 2014 and a clinical scientist research career development award from the National Institutes of Health in 2017.
Born and raised in Padova, Italy, Lunardi completed her medical degree, pursued a residency in anesthesiology and earned a Doctor of Philosophy in pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Padova. She then completed a critical care fellowship at UVA, where she has been on faculty since 2012.
In her free time away from clinic and her research, Lunardi enjoys spending time with her husband, young daughter and golden retriever.
Academic Information
- Department
- Anesthesiology
- Academic Role
- Associate Professor
- Division
- Critical Care Medicine
- Gender
- Female
- Languages
- Italian, French, English
- Age Groups Seen
- Adults (21-65)
Older Adults (65+)
- Primary Education
- University of Padova
- Residency
- University of Padova
- Fellowships
- University of Virginia School of Medicine
- Additional Specialties
- Anesthesiology
Highlights
Dr. Nadia Lunardi Video Profile
My name is Nadia Lunardi, and I am a general anesthesiologist, a critical care anesthesiologist, and also a clinician scientist here at UVA. In the main operating room, I take care of a variety of patients. In the critical care setting, I do specialize in looking after patients that have had surgery to their heart or their lungs. Early on when I was still in high school, one of my best girlfriends, there were three of us, had a motorbike accident and ended up needing the ICU, and was in the ICU for a long time. That, I'm sure, factored in and had an impact on my later decision to try to become a critical care physician to help people that find themselves in that situation. In the intensive care unit, some of these patients are with us for prolonged periods of times, and we actually get to know their families and their relatives and their loved ones. You really get to develop a relationship that's personal with the patient, but also with the people that know the patient well. And that's really, it's very powerful.