Kevin Kumar, M.D., Ph.D.

Kevin K. Kumar, M.D., Ph.D., is a pediatric neurosurgeon at Dell Children’s Medical Center and serves as surgical director of Neuro-Oncology. He specializes in the treatment of pediatric brain and spine tumors, vascular malformations, craniofacial disorders and epilepsy. He is board-eligible through the American Board of Neurological Surgery and the American Board of Pediatric Neurological Surgery.

Dr. Kumar completed his undergraduate education at Cornell University in 2009, where he graduated cum laude with distinction in research. He then received his Ph.D. and M.D. degrees from Vanderbilt University’s National Institutes of Health-funded Medical Scientist Training Program in 2014 and 2016, respectively. As a graduate student in the Vanderbilt Brain Institute, he studied neuronal manganese regulation in Parkinson’s and Huntington’s disease using high-throughput screening, induced pluripotent stem cells and chemical biology approaches. Dr. Kumar completed neurosurgery residency at Stanford University from 2016 to 2023, including service as chief resident from 2022 to 2023. During residency, he completed a two-year NIH NINDS R25-funded research fellowship in the Stanford Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, where his work focused on microglia replacement as a novel therapeutic platform for neurological disease. This work contributed to the first proof of concept of this technology in a mouse model of a lysosomal storage disorder. He subsequently completed fellowship training in pediatric neurosurgery at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford from 2023 to 2024.

Upon joining the faculty at The University of Texas at Austin, Dr. Kumar launched a research laboratory focused on developing cell-based and immune-modulating therapies for pediatric neurological disorders, with an emphasis on pediatric brain tumors and the tumor microenvironment. His academic interests include pediatric neuro-oncology, microglia biology, translational neuroscience, neurocognitive outcomes after pediatric brain tumor treatment and multidisciplinary care for children with complex neurosurgical disease. He has published more than 40 peer-reviewed scientific articles and delivered or contributed to more than 45 presentations at institutional, regional, national and international meetings.

Dr. Kumar’s work has been recognized with multiple honors, including the Donald O. Quest Medical Student Basic Science Award from the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, the Edwin Boldrey Young Investigator Award from the San Francisco Neurological Society, the Philip L. Gildenberg Resident Award from the American Association of Neurological Surgeons and the Resident Basic Science Research Award from Stanford University. As a faculty member, he was selected as an NIH K12 Scholar by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences and as a Texas Biodesign Fellow. He is also the recipient of the Cain Collaborative Research Pilot Grant and the New Directions in Research Award from The University of Texas at Austin. In 2026, he was named the Medicine and Healthcare winner at the Austin Under 40 Awards.