Hosted by Dr. John Jungck, Dr. Sudhir Kumar of Temple University will give a lecture entitled "Harnessing Ancient and Personal Mutations for Biodiversity and Biomedicine."

Molecular evolutionary studies, pivotal in biological domains such as functional genomics, systematics, and genomic medicine, have undergone a significant transformation over the past three decades. Initially focused on a modest number of sequences, researchers now analyze vast datasets covering thousands of genes, genomes, and somatic cells. This data expansion has introduced both opportunities and challenges, reshaping our approaches to comparative analysis of variations across pathogens, tumors, populations, and species. We frequently encountered limitations of existing methods, prompting the development of new computational techniques, machine-learning algorithms, and tools for reconstructing molecular phylogenies, estimating divergence times, and analyzing genetic variations in humans, tumors, and pathogens. Our innovations are aimed at efficient, scalable, and practical evolutionary bioinformatics, with an emphasis on green computing for sustainable scientific practices and democratized access to big data analytics. We have applied these comparative genomic methods to many big datasets, producing a diversity of biological knowledge ranging from the creation of the most extensive timetree of life to developing predictive models for blood cancer risk based on the evolutionary trajectory of blood cell progenitors. This research highlights the potential of Phylomedicine – integrating molecular phylogenetics, genomics, and medicine – in predicting, diagnosing, and treating genetic diseases. We have been making these insights accessible, exemplified by the MEGA software for comparative molecular sequence analysis and the TimeTree knowledgebase, which presents species divergence times from scientific literature, enhancing the utility of evolutionary methods and knowledge for the broader scientific community.

Dr. Sudhir Kumar is a leader in integrating mathematical and computational techniques into evolutionary biology and biomedicine. His contributions include mathematical methods, computational algorithms, software packages, and databases for investigating contemporary and ancient mutations that are the causes of species divergence, genetic diseases, viral spreading, and tumor phylogenomics. Many biological disciplines have widely used their methods, software packages (MEGA; megasoftware.net), and databases (TimeTree; timetree.org). His group has also conducted influential studies on evolution, genetic and infectious diseases, and tumor genomics. He has published over 200 articles presenting discoveries, methods, and resources, many of which have received citation classic and hot paper designations. Kumar is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2009). He received an Innovation Award in Functional Genomics from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund (2000), a Community Service Award from the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution (2017), and a Highly Cited Researcher designation (2014-2023). Kumar is a Laura H. Carnell Professor at the Department of Biology, Temple University, and Director of the Institute for Genomic and Evolutionary Medicine.