Architecture is a family tradition for Jeffrey Raven, NYIT's director of the graduate program in Urban and Regional Design. He has more than 20 years of experience, including running his namesake firm, RAVEN A+U. Longer still is an appreciation for architecture gleaned from living in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

There were several generations of architects in our family of French architects-urbanists, Raven says. Frequent visits to the family atelier captured my imagination when I was growing up in Paris.

A practicing Architect-urbanist, he describes RAVEN A+U as a professional practice with focus on U.S.-international projects and knowledge transfer, including low-carbon communities, green buildings, smart growth, and green infrastructure. As professor, researcher and advocate steeped in creative practice, he brings to the School of Architecture and Design a focus on the intersection of urban morphology, low-carbon cities and climate to prepare graduates confronting a rapidly urbanizing world threatened by potentially catastrophic climate-change.

Shaping U.S. and international policy on sustainable planning and design is integral to Raven's work. He serves as a member of the steering committee for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Global Change Research Program for Urban Resilience and as a technical advisor for the STAR Community Index, which is developing sustainable standards for American communities. He is a sought-after lecturer on a number of topics, including sustainable cities.

Raven’s climate-resilient urban design research is highly collaborative and cuts across disciplines. He drew on a collaborative mindset in his 2011 paper published by Springer, Cooling the Public Realm: Climate-Resilient Urban Design, which calls for design solutions inclusive of the energy sector, infrastructure planning, climate science, finance, and green building design. He is a co-author of the urban design and cities section of the 2012 U.S. National Climate Assessment Report. He serves as Coordinating Lead Author on the Assessment Report for Climate Change in Cities (Cambridge Press 2018), whose presentation at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) will provide cities with the scientific basis for effective climate-resilient planning and design strategies.

Raven was elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects in 2015.