Dr. Sukumaran is a research assistant professor on Quantitative/Population genetics at the Department of Plant & Environmental sciences and Stephen Kresovich's Advanced Plant Technology Program at Clemson university from August 2024. Prior to joining Clemson, Dr. Sukumaran was a research fellow in sorghum genetics and genomics at The University of Queensland, Australia and worked on an ARC project on the genetics and genomics of sorghum tillering from 2022 to 2024. 

From 2015 to 2021, Dr. Sukumaran lead the spring wheat physiological pre-breeing pipeline at the International Maize and wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), Mexico to develop high yielding, rust resistant, heat and drought tolerant lines to distribute to developing countries. He has contributed to over 300 improved pre-bred spring wheat lines distributed to 100 countries over a seven year period through IWYP and HedWIC consortiums. In 2013, Dr. Sukumaran joined CIMMYT as a post-doctoral fellow (2013-2014) and advanced through Associate Scientist (2015-2017) and Scientist (2018-2021) ranks.

Dr. Sukumaran did his Ph.D. on Plant Breeding and Genetics from Kansas State University, Manhattan, USA under the guidance of Dr. Jianming Yu and worked to understand and map genomic regions for drought tolerance and grain quality in sorghum. His masters on Plant Breeding and Genetics was from Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Tamil Nadu and Bachelors in Agriculture from Kerala Agricultural University, Kerala, India.