Kumarasamy Thangaraj is a population and medical geneticist at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad. He was the director of the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD; 2020-2023), President of the Indian Society of Human Genetics (2011–2015), and founder of the Society for Mitochondrial Research and Medicine. He published about 300 research articles, mostly on the origin of South Asians, including the Andaman tribes. He is an elected Fellow of all major science Academies in India, recipient of several awards including the JC Bose Fellowship and is the editor and editorial board member of journals such as Mitochondrion, BMC Medical Genetics, Human Genetics and Clinical Genetics.