Over this course of his medical and scientific training, Rahul Kumar has focused his efforts on understanding disease through the integration of basic and clinical science. As an aspiring academic neurosurgeon, Kumar hopes to leverage surgical interventions with translational research efforts to improve outcomes for patients with devastating illnesses of the central and peripheral nervous systems.
Kumar earned bachelor’s degrees in biochemistry and biophysics and a master’s degree in physics in 2013 from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He is currently pursuing both a PhD at St. Jude and an MD at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC). He has gained research experience in neuropharmacology at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, cardiovascular physiology at UTHSC and functional neurosurgery at UTHSC/Semmes-Murphey Clinic. He continues to remain involved in clinical neurosurgery research at his medical school.
Kumar currently works in the lab of Paul Northcott, PhD, Developmental Neurobiology. His current research focuses on deciphering the genomic landscape of relapsed medulloblastomas using cutting-edge genomics platforms and bioinformatic analyses. He earned an additional master’s degree from the St. Jude Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences in June 2019.
“St. Jude is the prototypical translational research institution with its focus on collaboration and integration of basic and clinical science,” he says. “The tremendous strides in basic science and clinical management of devastating diseases has led to an astonishing survivorship that continues to provide remarkable insight into how we can improve.”
Hometown: Germantown, Tennessee
Dissertation: Applied multi-dimensional genomics of relapsed medulloblastoma
Publications
Sillay KA, Ondoma S, Wingeier B, Schomberg D, Sharma P, Kumar R, Miranpuri GS, Williams J. Long-Term Surface Electrode Impedance Recordings Associated with Gliosis for a Closed-Loop Neurostimulation Device. Ann Neurosci 25(4): 289-98, 2018.
Kumar R, Liu APY, Orr BA, Northcott PA, Robinson GW. Advances in the classification of pediatric brain tumors through DNA methylation profiling: From research tool to frontline diagnostic. Cancer 124(21): 4168-4180, 2018.
Kumar R, Simpson CV, Froelich CA, Baughman BC, Gienapp AJ, Sillay KA. Obesity and deep brain stimulation: an overview. Ann Neurosci 22(3): 181-8, 2015.
Zhao T, Zhao W, Meng W, Liu C, Chen Y, Gerling IC, Weber KT, Bhattacharya SK, Kumar R, Sun Y. VEGF-C/VEGFR-3 pathway promotes myocyte hypertrophy and survival in the infarcted myocardium. Am J Transl Res 7(4): 697-709, 2015.