Virajita Singh, Senior Research Fellow, LEED AP, singh023@umn

Virajita Singh is a Senior Research Fellow in the Center for Sustainable Building Research (CSBR) and Adjunct Assistant Professor in the School of Architecture, College of Design (CDes). This Spring semester, Virajita is teaching a course on Design Thinking for Innovation in the College of Continuing Education. With colleagues at the College of Design, Virajita leads an initiative to apply design thinking in teaching, research and outreach. She recently conducted design thinking workshops in three communities in Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota to assist them in the envisioning of their local and sustainable foods future and is beginning a project partnering with the City of Minneapolis/Hennepin County's Office to End Homelessness on applying design thinking to the redesign of the homeless single adult emergency shelter delivery system.

Virajita also leads CSBR's sustainable Design for Community Resilience program that engages students from the College of Design to assist communities interested in taking sustainable action. Virajita's vision is to partner in, assist and help accelerate the transformation currently underway of Minnesota's communities towards sustainability using design, one community at a time. Her recent work includes "Visualizing Indicators-Affecting Change: Design Meets Metrics To Accelerate Transformation Towards A Sustainable Northwestern Minnesota" a project involving data visualization to inform community action; and Children and Nature, an interdisciplinary cross-sector project involving design and community participation to develop nature based play spaces in communities of northwestern Minnesota. She is also the co-recipient of a recent University of Minnesota Center for Integrative Leadership research grant to test the application of design thinking with integrative leadership in the context of a Minnesota statewide citizen-board.

Virajita has a bachelor's degree in architecture from Mumbai, India, a master's degree in architecture from the University of Minnesota and is a LEED accredited professional. Virajita is a faculty mentor in the University's Global Programs & Strategy Alliance's 2012 Internationalizing the Curriculum program. Outside research and teaching in architecture and sustainability, Virajita passion lies in areas of social justice, culture, sacred spaces, and the arts. She volunteers regularly at a local homeless shelter with her spiritual community. Virajita is a Collection-in-Focus Guide at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts for the museum's Arts of China collection and pursues her own art practice.