Dr. Kumar’s research focuses on population-level disease burden estimation, risk factor distribution, maternal and neonatal health, injuries, and health system performance. Dr. Kumar has made substantial contributions to mortality estimation. He has been involved for more than a decade in verbal autopsy research, including work under the Population Health Metrics Research Consortium and the Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative on gold standard cause-of-death assignment. He routinely works with Sample Registration System cause-of-death data as part of the Global Burden of Disease Study and has conducted detailed analyses of India’s Civil Registration and Vital Statistics system, examining coverage trends, documentation gaps, and comparisons with national household surveys.

His expertise spans capacity-building in statistics and research methods, development of data strategies, design of large-scale data collection systems, and advanced analysis of survey, census, administrative, and monitoring data. He has successfully developed and managed data systems for large-scale studies, directing data operations and overseeing validation processes across multiple research initiatives.

He has over 200 peer-reviewed publications in leading national and international journals. Dr. Kumar has served as Co-Investigator on grants funded by the Indian Council of Medical Research, Wellcome Trust (UK), National Institutes of Health (USA), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and National Institute for Health and Care Research (UK).

He holds a PhD in Demography from the University of Kerala and has received honours, including the Endeavour Research Fellowship (Australia) and national awards recognizing excellence in health research and health systems assessment.