Rajul (Raj) Pandya is the VP of Community Science at American Geophysical Union. Raj invites everyone to be part of guiding and doing science, especially people from historically marginalized communities, so that the sciences can contribute to a world where all people and nature can thrive, now and in the future.

Raj chaired the National Academies committee on “Designing Citizen Science to Support Science Learning,” serves on the boards for Public Lab and the Anthropocene Alliance and is a member of the Independent Advisory Committee on Applied Climate Assessment. He helped launch the Resilience Dialogues – a public-private partnership that uses facilitated online dialogues to advance community resilience. He was a founding board member of the Citizen Science Association and served as Education and Human Resource Commissioner for the American Meteorological Society.

Before joining AGU, Raj led education, engagement, and diversity programs connected to the National Center for Atmospheric Research, led an international research and development project that used weather data to better manage meningitis in Africa, and held a faculty position at West Chester State University. Raj got his PhD from University of Washington exploring how large thunderstorms grow and persist.

Raj lives in Colorado with his wife Amy (a physician his parents call ‘the real doctor’), their daughter Maya, and their dog Nala.