Kumar Thurimella

About Me

I am a final year MD student at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and completed my PhD at the University of Cambridge. As an applied mathematician and software engineer turned future physician, I use computational and mathematical approaches to uncover mechanisms behind inflammatory diseases of the gut.

Current Research

My PhD in Biotechnology and Mathematics/Statistics focuses on using mathematical modelling to understand inflammatory disease mechanisms and aid the discovery of future treatments. I work with Dr. Roisin Owens and Dr. Sergio Bacallado at Cambridge, and am jointly advised by Dr. Ramnik Xavier at the Broad Institute and Mass General Hospital.

My recent work includes developing CAZyLingua, the first protein language model-based tool for annotating carbohydrate-active enzymes in metagenomics (BMC Bioinformatics, 2025).

I am grateful to the Gates Cambridge Scholarship and Rotary International Scholarship for funding my PhD.

Background