Meet Dr. Kumar

Dr. Jaswinder 'Jesse' Kumar obtained his BS in Chemistry from the Georgia Institute of Technology and his MD-PhD from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School. As a PhD student, he completed his dissertation research at Harvard Medical School's McLean Hospital, where he studied the neurobiology of chronic stress and cocaine addiction in animal models.

After graduating medical school, Dr. Kumar began his psychiatry residency at the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, later transitioning to the University of Washington to pursue joint clinical and postdoctoral research training. He then returned to UCLA for an additional year of fellowship training in the Mood Disorders Clinic, a tertiary care specialty clinic for individuals suffering from treatment-resistant depression and bipolar disorder.

Dr. Kumar is a board-certified adult psychiatrist. He specializes in advanced psychopharmacology for treatment-resistant unipolar and bipolar depression. His long-term interests involve better understanding the biology of depression and antidepressant action.

In addition to providing clinical care, Dr. Kumar serves as volunteer clinical professor of psychiatry in the UCLA Mood Clinic, where he directly supervises psychiatry residents.