Virajita Singh is Associate Vice Provost in the Office of Equity and Diversity (OED) where she brings her expertise in design thinking, and partnership studies to catalyze and support equity and diversity work of colleges and other academic units at the University of Minnesota.  Trained as an architect, Virajita is also Senior Research Fellow and Faculty in the College of Design and its Center for Sustainable Building Research where she leads a program she founded, Design for Community Resilience, that works to bring participatory, sustainable and regenerative design to communities in rural and urban Minnesota. Inspired by her long-standing expertise and interest in the topics of architecture and religion, Virajita has taught design studios and architecture courses on campus and as study abroad experiences that explore the intersection of architecture, environment, religion and religious spaces. She co-convenes (with Dr. Jeanne Kilde, Director of UMN’s Religious Studies Program) the Religion and Public University Collaborative (RPUC) at the University of Minnesota, hosted by the UMN’s Institute of Advanced Study (IAS). In the spring of 2022, she will lead a study abroad course for the University of Minnesota titled Iceland: Nature, Culture, Arts & Design. Virajita is also a practicing visual artist herself and a passionate supporter of the arts in all its forms, and volunteers as a Museum Guide at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (Mia) in the China, Japan and Korea and S/SE Asia collections.