Dr. Raj is an Associate Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of South Florida since December 2021, with expertise in molecular parasitology, immunology, and vaccine development in vector-borne diseases. Before joining USF, He was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology at Alpert Brown Medical School, Providence, RI. Dr. Raj's research mainly focuses on malaria, the world's greatest single-agent killer of children. The spread of parasites resistant to antimalarial drugs threatens an effective treatment strategy against malaria and underscores the urgent need to identify an efficacious vaccine against the disease. Dr. Raj's research over the last 20+ years is focused on the vaccine and drug development against falciparum malaria. As a postdoctoral fellow in the Laboratory of Malaria and Vector Research (LMVR) at the Division of Intramural Research at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) NIH, Dr. Raj extensively worked on potential vaccine candidates and drug-resistant genes against falciparum malaria. Dr. Raj pioneered experiments to identify a new antimalarial transmission-blocking agent (Ketotifen). He achieved several successes in studies on malariology, including publications in reputed peer-reviewed scientific journals, patents, and awards. Dr. Raj's research at the Center for International Health Research (CIHR) at Brown University helped identify several novel vaccine candidates against pediatric falciparum malaria, which transformed into high-value patents. The vaccine candidates and anti-PfGARP drugs are in the pipeline for a human trial in collaboration with a biotech company (Ocean Biomedical). The data also generated Lead-authored high-impact full-length research articles in Raj et al., Nature 2020, CID 2019 & Science 2014. Dr. Raj is truly an asset to the field of molecular parasitology and has proven his scientific abilities. His work on vectorborne diseases is beneficial in the fight against malaria and advancing scientific understanding of the molecular mechanisms of vector-borne diseases.