Kuldeep Kumar, Ph.D. | Postdoctoral Researcher

About Me

Hello! I'm Kuldeep Kumar.
I am in the job market, looking for a tenure-track assistant professor position.

Why does a single genetic variant cause developmental delay in childhood yet trigger psychosis in adolescence?

My research program addresses this fundamental question by investigating how genetic risk for psychiatric illness accumulates across the lifespan through changes in brain development.

The Core Insight: Brain development isn't uniform—different networks mature at different times. My work has shown that genetic variants preferentially impact early-developing sensorimotor networks (and surface area), while psychiatric diagnoses show preferential associations with later-maturing association networks (and cortical thickness). This temporal separation suggests that what we see in patients reflects not just genetic risk, but the accumulated effects of living with a disorder.

Research Vision: I integrate genetics, neuroimaging, and behavior to build a "genes to brain networks to behavior" framework that:

  • Maps how rare and common genetic variants affect brain structure and function across development
  • Distinguishes genetic vulnerability from environmental and experiential effects (medication, socioeconomic factors, lived experience)
  • Identifies early neurobiological markers of risk within critical developmental windows

Approach: I develop computational methods to analyze biobank-scale datasets (100,000+ individuals) from consortia including PGC-CNV, ENIGMA, and G2MH. My work spans from genome-wide association studies to machine learning algorithms that create personalized "brain fingerprints," connecting molecular mechanisms to individual brain trajectories.

Impact: This research bridges the widening gap between genomic discoveries and clinical neuroscience, working toward personalized risk prediction and early intervention strategies for neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders.

Background:

  • Postdoc: University of Montréal (Lab of Dr. Sebastien Jacquemont), studying the impact of rare variants on cognition and brain structure.
  • Ph.D. in Computer Science: ÉTS, Montreal (Prof. Christian Desrosiers), developed frameworks for multi-modal MRI analysis and brain fingerprinting using machine learning.
  • M.Tech. & B.Tech. (Honors) in Electronics & Electrical Engineering: IIT Kharagpur, India.

Professional Experience:

  • 2024/12 - 2025/03 Visiting Researcher, University of Cambridge, UK . Copy number variant architecture of the human brain's cortical organization.
  • 2016/10 - 2017/03 Visiting Researcher, Aramis lab, ICM, Inria Paris, France . Developed a method for white matter fiber segmentation using functional varifolds.
  • 2012/06 - 2013/08 Scientist, Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), SAC Ahmedabad, India . Developed satellite image registration algorithms; deployed satellite image-based crop forecasting software (FASALSoft); calibrated thermal imaging data for Mars Orbiter Mission.
  • 2011/05 - 2011/07 Research Assistant, MITACS Globalink Internship, ETS Montreal, Canada . Developed manifold learning models to predict future states of time-evolving structure.
  • 2010/05 - 2010/07 Research Assistant, GREYC Lab, Universite de Caen Basse-Normandie, France . Compared deep neural networks with SVM and tree-based classifiers for diffusion MRI data classification.
Photo of Kuldeep Kumar

Current Research Projects

Curriculum Vitae

You can download my full, up-to-date CV here.

Download Full CV (PDF)

Awards & Honors

Grants

  1. 2025: Co-I on CIHR grant, ”Multifeature brain investigation of genetic liability for neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders” (PI: Sebastien Jacquemont). Generated the main hypothesis and related preliminary results for the grant.
  2. 2023: Part of NIH R01 grant on Neuroimaging & CNVs (PI: Sebastien Jacquemont, Paul Thompson, and Carrie Bearden). Generated the preliminary results for two aims (CNV neuroimaging signatures and their transcriptomic and cellular decoding) and power analysis for all three aims of the grant.
  3. 2023: Part of CIHR grant, ”Combining Space, Time, and cell types to decode and explain the effect sizes of rare genomic variants on cognition and psychopathology.” (PI: Sebastien Jacquemont). Generated the main hypothesis and related preliminary results for the grant.
  4. 2023: Part of NIH R01 grant on 22q11.2 deletion (PI: Carrie Bearden). Generated preliminary results on transcriptomic and cellular decoding of 22q11.2 deletion MRI profiles and related power analysis for the grant.

Teaching & Mentoring

  1. 2025: Teaching assistant (N=52), Neuromatch Academy 2025, Computational Neuroscience course
  2. 2024: Teaching assistant (N=27), Neuromatch Academy 2024, Computational Neuroscience course
  3. 2022; 2023: Neuromatch Academy 2022 (N=6) / and 2023 Mentor (N=7), Mentored Neuromatch Academy students for their final projects
  4. 2018-present: PhD students' supervision, Canada (N=2)
  5. 2019; 2021: CHU Sainte-Justine undergraduate Internship supervision, Canada (N=2)
  6. 2016, 2015: Globalink Research Internship Mentor, MITACS, Canada (N=6)

Select Publications

For a complete list, please see my Google Scholar profile.

  1. Engchuan, W., Shanta, O., Kumar, K., MacDonald, J. R., et al. (2025). Psychiatric disorders converge on common pathways but diverge in cellular context, spatial distribution, and directionality of genetic effects. medRxiv (2025): 2025-07. Part of the PGC-CNV package. [PDF]
  2. Kumar, K., Liao, Z., et al. (2025). Cortical differences across psychiatric disorders and associated common and rare genetic variants. medRxiv (2025): 2025-04. [PDF]
  3. Kazem*, S., Kumar*, K., et al. (2025). Gene dosage architecture across complex traits. medRxiv (2025): 2025-02. *: Joint first author. [PDF]
  4. Kumar*, K., Kazem*, S., et al. (2025). Mirror effect of genomic deletions and duplications on cognitive ability across the human cerebral cortex. To be submitted soon. bioRxiv (2025): 2025-01. *: Joint first author. Part of the PGC-CNV package. [PDF]
  5. Liao, Z., Kumar, K., et al. (2025). Copy Number Variants and the Tangential Expansion of the Cerebral Cortex. Nature Communications 16.1 (2025), 1697. [PDF]
  6. Kumar, K.*, Modenato, C.*, Moreau, C., Ching, C. R., Harvey, A., et al. (2023). Subcortical brain alterations in carriers of genomic copy number variants. American Journal of Psychiatry, 180(9), 685–698. *: Joint first author. [PDF]
  7. Kopal, J., Kumar, K., Saltoun, K., et al. (2023). Rare cnvs and phenome-wide profiling highlight brain structural divergence and phenotypical convergence. Nature Human Behaviour, 7(6), 1001–1017. [PDF]
  8. Moreau, C. A., Kumar, K., Harvey, A., et al. (2023). Brain functional connectivity mirrors genetic pleiotropy in psychiatric conditions. Brain, 146(4), 1686–1696. [PDF]
  9. Modenato, C.*, Kumar, K.*, Moreau, C., Martin-B., S., et al. (2021). Effects of eight neuropsychiatric copy number variants on human brain structure. Translational Psychiatry, 11(1), 399. *: Joint first author. [PDF]
  10. Kumar, K., Siddiqi, K., and Desrosiers, C. (2019). White matter fiber analysis using kernel dictionary learning and sparsity priors. Pattern Recognition, 95, 83–95. [PDF]
  11. Kumar, K., Toews, M., Chauvin, L., Colliot, O., and Desrosiers, C. (2018). Multi-modal brain fingerprinting: A manifold approximation based framework. NeuroImage, 183, 212–226. [PDF]
  12. Kumar, K., Desrosiers, C., Siddiqi, K., Colliot, O., and Toews, M. (2017). Fiberprint: A subject fingerprint based on sparse code pooling for white matter fiber analysis. NeuroImage, 158, 242–259. [PDF]

Select Oral Presentations

  1. 2025/04: Discordant Cortical Patterns between Psychiatric Disorders and Corresponding Common and Rare Genetic Risks. Society of Biological Psychiatry (SOBP) 2025, Toronto, Canada
  2. 2024/11: Rare Copy Number Variant architecture of the cortical organization of the human brain. American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) 2024, Denver, USA
  3. 2024/05: Subcortical brain alterations across copy number variants converge with those in severe mental illnesses. SOBP 2024, Austin, USA
  4. 2023/11: Autism and cognitive ability: insights from gene dosage and large scale brain networks. American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) 2023, DC, USA
  5. 2023/09: Gene dosage across the human brain and effects on cognition and ASD risk. Genes to Mental Health (G2MH) annual meeting, NIMH, USA (2023)

Select Presentation

Link to SOBP 2024 Presentation

SOBP 2024: Click to watch on Vimeo

Connect on X (Twitter)

Contact

Professional:
kuldeep.kumar@umontreal.ca

Personal:
kuldeepkumar.iitkgp@gmail.com