Dr. Raja is a professor of urban and regional planning and the principal investigator of the Food Systems Planning and Healthy Communities Lab at the University at Buffalo (UB), the State University of New York. She focuses her research, education, and civic engagement on the role of places and planning in promoting health and food equity. She co-directs UB’s Community for Global Health Equity, a transdisciplinary center that leverages planning, engineering, and allied disciplines to reduce global health inequity. 

Her major national research project in the United States is Growing Food Connections, which strengthens connections between growers and consumers through local government planning. A current Global South project is Planning for Regenerative Equitable Food Systems in Urban Globalizing Environments, which focuses on smallholder farmers in India, Ghana, and Jamaica who bear the brunt of globalization, urbanization, and extreme weather events.  

An award winning scholar, Raja has published widely in collaboration with academic and civil society partners. She recently guest edited Planning for Equitable Urban and Regional Food Systems, a special issue in Built Environment. Raja is the lead author of a forthcoming FAO-supported report on local government planning for community food systems in the Global South.