Sudhir Kumar

Biography

Sudhir Kumar joined CIS as a Carnell Professor. His primary appointment is in the Department of Biology and he is the founding director of the Institute for Genomics and Evolutionary Medicine (iGEM). Dr. Kumar uses informatics as primary research tool to discover biological patterns and to make predictions in subject matters spanning the tree of life to the diagnosis of disease mutations. He has developed many algorithms, statistical methods, computer software, and web databases in biology and genomics. Recently, Thomson Reuters ScienceWatch designated him the Most Highly Cited Researcher in Computer Science in the last 10 years. Dr. Kumar has written over 150 papers, including many citation classics and hot papers. Dr. Kumar was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) for exemplary contributions in evolutionary bioinformatics, particularly in developing high-impact comparative analysis software for biologists and in illuminating the evolutionary dynamics of mutations and species through comparative genomics.

Research Interest

Sudhir Kumar research fields are phylomedicine, molecular evolution and functional genomics. The common theme of his research is the use of comparative analysis to reveal genome differences that are outcomes of natural selection on novel mutations. The taxonomic breadth of his studies spans the tree of life and the timescale of mutation transmission ranges from generation to generation and cell division to cell division. In pursuit of these biological discoveries, his team also developing new statistical methods and computer algorithms to quickly analyze large-scale datasets. He has also developed and disseminated many high-impact software tools (MEGA) and databases (TimeTree, FlyExpress, www.myPEG.info).