Kumar Visvanathan MBBS, PhD, FRACP

Professor Kumar Visvanathan is a specialist in infectious diseases and the immunology of the innate immune system with a career spanning over three decades. He is currently the Clinical Director of Medicine & Emergency Services and Co-Director of the Immunology Research Center at St. Vincent's Hospital (Melbourne).

Following his medical undergraduate degree in 1986, Kumar, completed his PhD thesis at the University of New South Wales and undertook postgraduate work at Rockefeller University in New York. He came back to Australia in 2000 and started his laboratory in innate immunity at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute moving to Monash University and Monash Medical Center in 2005 before moving more recently to the University of Melbourne and St.Vincents Hopital in 2012. He developed prominence through his innovative research on the innate immunity involving sepsis and viral hepatitis (Hepatology, 2003).