American Geophysical Union, Thriving Earth Exchange AGU Thriving Earth Exchange
Raj
Rajul (Raj) Pandya directs American Geophysical Union’s Thriving Earth Exchange. The Thriving Earth Exchange helps volunteer scientists and community leaders work together to use science, especially Earth and space science, to advance community priorities related to sustainability, resilience, disaster risk reduction, and environmental justice.
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 Allianceand 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.