Sudhir Kumar (researcher)

Sudhir Kumar is an Indian-born American scientist whose research integrates mathematical and computational techniques into evolutionary biology and genomic medicine. His contributions include the development of widely‐used phylogenetic methods and tools, such as the MEGA software package and TimeTree resource, reconstructing the timescale of species evolution, advancing the evolutionary understanding of diseases, and insights into ecological influences on genome composition.

Sudhir Kumar
Born
Delhi, India
Alma materBirla Institute of Technology and Science Pennsylvania State University
AwardsInnovation Award in Functional Genomics, Burroughs Wellcome Fund

Top-10 most-cited scientist in Computer Sciences Top-100 most-cited articles of all time

Community Service Award, Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution (SMBE)
Scientific career
FieldsBioinformatics, evolutionary biology, genomic medicine
InstitutionsTemple University Institute for Genomics and Evolutionary Medicine
Doctoral advisorMasatoshi Nei
Websitehttps://www.kumarlab.net/

He is the director of the Institute for Genomics and Evolutionary Medicine at Temple University. He was President of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution in 2013 and the Editor-in-Chief of the Molecular Biology and Evolution from 2012-2022. He is currently the Section Chief Editor for Evolutionary Bioinformatics in the Frontiers in Bioinformatics journal.

Early life and education

Sudhir Kumar was born in Delhi in 1967. He was the first in his family to complete high school and attend a university for higher education. Kumar received dual degrees in Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical and Electronics) and Master of Science (Biological Sciences) degrees in 1990 from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS, India). He studied with Masatoshi Nei and received his Ph.D. in Genetics from the Pennsylvania State University in 1996. He worked with Masatoshi Nei for two more years as a postdoctoral fellow to co-write the Molecular Evolution and Phylogenetics[1] book.

Career

Kumar became an Assistant Professor at Arizona State University in 1998, was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2002, became a Full Professor in 2006, and received Regents’ professorship in 2012. Kumar moved to Temple University in 2014, becoming a Laura H. Carnell Professor of Biology.

In 2002, Kumar established a Center for Evolutionary Functional Genomics at Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute, which became the Center for Evolutionary Medicine and Informatics in 2012. At the time of his move to Temple University, he founded the Institute for Genomics and Evolutionary Medicine in 2014 and continues to serve as its director.

Research

As a graduate student in 1991, Kumar began developing the MEGA software package, designing its user interface, and programming its computational methods and algorithms in the laboratory of Masatoshi Nei. Koichiro Tamura, a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory, developed the phylogeny viewer for the first version of MEGA, which was publicly released in 1993. Kumar, Tamura, and colleagues have modernized and expanded MEGA for years.[2] MEGA has been downloaded over 3 million times and cited in over 200,000 articles.[3]

Kumar has advanced the emerging field of green computing[3] in molecular phylogenetics by developing many computationally‐efficient methods for molecular phylogenetics of big data. These include an algebraic relative‐rate framework for estimating divergence times when evolutionary rates don’t follow a molecular clock and methods for estimating evolutionary distances, testing inferred phylogenies by little bootstraps, and detecting natural selection.[4]

In collaboration with S. Blair Hedges, Kumar utilized contemporary big data to construct the first molecular timescale of vertebrates in the 1990s,[5] which revealed a correlation between continental breakup and the earliest speciation events in placental mammals.[6] These species patterns and speciation processes have been independently confirmed in some modern genome‐scale analyses.[7] Subsequently, their team has assembled the largest timetree of life, encompassing >140,000 species. Its user‐friendly website and inclusion in David Attenborough's Emmy‐winning 'Rise of Animals' series has brought evolution to worldwide audiences.

Kumar has applied comparative approaches broadly from evolution to ecology and biomedicine. His collaborative efforts showed the impact of environmental nutrient availability on the composition of genomes and proteomes in higher organisms.[8] His research group showed a direct relationship between disease‐associated genetic variation and evolutionary constraints,[9] paving the way for novel disease mutation diagnostics and articulating the interdisciplinary field of Phylomedicine.

Awards and honors

References
  1. Nei, Masatoshi; Kumar, Sudhir (2000). Molecular evolution and phylogenetics. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press. ISBN 978-0-19-513585-5.
  2. Caspermeyer, Joseph (2018-06-01). "MEGA Software Celebrates Silver Anniversary". Molecular Biology and Evolution. 35 (6): 1558–1560. doi:10.1093/molbev/msy098. ISSN 0737-4038.
  3. Kumar, Sudhir (2022-03-02). "Embracing Green Computing in Molecular Phylogenetics". Molecular Biology and Evolution. 39 (3). doi:10.1093/molbev/msac043. ISSN 0737-4038. PMC 8894743. PMID 35243506.
  4. Kumar, Sudhir. "Kumar Lab Publications". Kumar Lab. Archived from the original on 2023-06-05. Retrieved 2023-07-16.
  5. Kumar, Sudhir; Hedges, S. Blair (1998). "A molecular timescale for vertebrate evolution". Nature. 392 (6679): 917–920. doi:10.1038/31927. ISSN 0028-0836.
  6. Hedges, S. Blair; Parker, Patrick H.; Sibley, Charles G.; Kumar, Sudhir (1996). "Continental breakup and the ordinal diversification of birds and mammals". Nature. 381 (6579): 226–229. doi:10.1038/381226a0. ISSN 0028-0836.
  7. Foley, Nicole M.; Mason, Victor C.; Harris, Andrew J.; Bredemeyer, Kevin R.; Damas, Joana; Lewin, Harris A.; Eizirik, Eduardo; Gatesy, John; Karlsson, Elinor K.; Lindblad-Toh, Kerstin; Zoonomia Consortium‡; Springer, Mark S.; Murphy, William J.; Andrews, Gregory; Armstrong, Joel C. (2023-04-28). "A genomic timescale for placental mammal evolution". Science. 380 (6643). doi:10.1126/science.abl8189. ISSN 0036-8075. PMC 10233747. PMID 37104581.
  8. Elser, James J.; Acquisti, Claudia; Kumar, Sudhir (2010-11-19). "Stoichiogenomics: the evolutionary ecology of macromolecular elemental composition". Trends in Ecology & Evolution. 26 (1): 38–44. doi:10.1016/j.tree.2010.10.006. PMC 3010507. PMID 21093095.
  9. Miller, M. P. (2001-10-01). "Understanding human disease mutations through the use of interspecific genetic variation". Human Molecular Genetics. 10 (21): 2319–2328. doi:10.1093/hmg/10.21.2319.
  10. Smith, Derek R. (2015-03-04). ""Platinum H": Refining the H-Index to More Realistically Assess Career Trajectory and Scientific Publications". Archives of Environmental & Occupational Health. 70 (2): 67–69. doi:10.1080/19338244.2015.1016833. ISSN 1933-8244.
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