Rachit Kumar

MD-PhD Student, University of Pennsylvania
Perelman School of Medicine (MD)
Genomics and Computational Biology (PhD)

I am a fifth-year MD-PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania, and I am currently a doctoral student advised by Dr. Marylyn Ritchie in the Ritchie Lab, located in the Penn Institute for Biomedical Informatics. You can see some of my publications here.

My dissertation research involves making use of novel (especially graph and network) representations of biomedical data for a variety of downstream tasks. This includes incorporating preexisting scientific and clinical knowledge alongside individual data to diagnose and treat patients, as well as making use of 2D and 3D graph representations of molecules and proteins to predict drug binding and affinity. My current disease focus is in Alzheimer’s disease, though I also have a personal interest in hearing loss, and I aspire to develop my methods in a highly generalizable manner.

Beyond my time in the clinic and in the lab, I am involved in teaching and leadership at Penn and beyond. I also enjoy a variety of hobbies, including trying out new foods, playing video games, and running.