
Professor Veena Kumari
Professor - Psychology
Quad North 148
- Email: veena.kumari@brunel.ac.uk
- Tel: +44 (0)1895 268053
Summary
Professor Veena Kumari obtained a PhD in Psychology from Banaras Hindu University, India in 1993 prior to joining the Institute of Psychiatry, London for post-doctoral research. She became a Beit Memorial Research Fellow in 1999, a Wellcome Senior Fellow in Basic Biomedical Science in 2002, and a Full Professor in 2006 at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (formerly known as the Institute of Psychiatry), King’s College London, UK. She left King’s College London in 2016 to join the Sovereign Health Group (USA) as the Chief Scientific Officer and returned to the UK in 2018 to join Brunel University London as Professor of Psychology and the Director of the Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience (CCN).
Her research interests include the neurobiological effects of pharmacological and psychological treatments in psychosis, neurobiology of violence in mental illness, psychobiology of addiction, and personality and brain functioning. Prof Kumari has over 250 publications in reputed psychology, psychiatry and neuroscience journals and received various national and international awards for her research including the Young Investigator Award from the National Alliance of Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, USA (1999), research fellowship from BEIT Memorial Foundation (1999-2002), the BAP (British Association of Psychopharmacology) Clinical Psychopharmacology Prize (2002), Wellcome Senior Fellowship in Basic Biomedical Science (2002-2009), the prestigious Humboldt Research Award (2014), and most recently a Bonn International Fellowship (2020).
Professor Kumari has supervised a large number of post-graduate and doctoral students and served in editor or editorial board member roles for a number of psychology and psychiatry journals.
Newest selected publications
Aldridge-Waddon, L., Vanova, M., Elbers, L., Puzzo, I., Muneke, J. and Kumari, V. (2023) 'Scenario-specific aberrations of social reward processing in dimensional schizotypy and psychopathy'. Scientific Reports, 12 (1). pp. 1 - 10. ISSN: 2045-2322 Open Access Link
Chauhan, S., Norbury, R., Faßbender, KC., Ettinger, U. and Kumari, V. (2023) 'Beyond Sleep: A Multidimensional Model of Chronotype'. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 148. pp. 1 - 14. ISSN: 0149-7634 Open Access Link
Dhakal, S., Gupta, S., Sharma, NP., Upadhyay, A., Oliver, A., Sumich, A., (2023) 'Can we challenge attention and interpretation threat biases in rescued child labourers with a history of physical abuse using a computerised cognitive training task? Data on feasibility, acceptability and target engagement'. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 162. pp. 104267 - 104267. ISSN: 0005-7967 Open Access Link
et al.Kumari, V., Antonova, E., Mahmood, S., Shukla, M., Saifullah, A. and Pandey, R. (2022) 'Dispositional mindfulness, alexithymia and sensory processing: Emerging insights from habituation of the acoustic startle reflex response'. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 184. pp. 20 - 27. ISSN: 0167-8760 Open Access Link
Naysmith, LF., Williams, SCR. and Kumari, V. (2022) 'The influence of stimulus onset asynchrony, task order, sex and hormonal contraception on prepulse inhibition and prepulse facilitation: Methodological considerations for drug and imaging research'. Journal of Psychopharmacology, 36 (11). pp. 1234 - 1242. ISSN: 0269-8811 Open Access Link