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 Centre 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 Centre 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). This original research was the first to examine innate immunity in viral hepatitis and initiated new ways of understanding the immunology of hepatitis and the importance of the work has generated numerous scientific investigations into the area. He is the recipient of multiple NH&MRC and ACH2 grants and NH&MRC scholarships, most notably, the prestigious Frank Fenner Award for Advanced Research in Infectious Disease in 2006, which is the highest honor granted by the Australiasian Society of Infectious Diseases. To date he has supervised over 10 clinicians who have undertaken their PhD training in his laboratory. His expertise has seen him author 4 books, chapters, and over 90 peer-reviewed original research publications. He has a number of international collaborations with Fudan University in China and investigators in New Zealand, the United States, Italy and China.

He is a long term editor for the Journal of Inflammation Research. He played a major role in organizing a number of international conferences including being on the scientific committees for the Lancefield International Streptococcal Conference in Cannes (2005), International Conference on Molecular Biology of HBV (2009 & 2011) and is significantly involved in local and national workshops on Toll like receptors and HBV in pregnancy