Lavaraj is a Monash university PhD graduate who has spent most of his research career working at the interface of food industry and academia. He was a part of a specially designed PhD project called Monash food and dairy graduate research industry partnership (GRIP) program which was in collaboration with Simplot Australia Pty. Ltd. During his first tenure as research fellow, he worked alongside alternative protein science and technology team at Archer-Daniels-Midland (ADM) company, USA. Currently he works alongside R&D team at Kraft Heinz ANZ through the ARC Linkage project. His carries independent and supervised research in areas of non-thermal processing, plant proteins for meat and dairy analogue and functional food formulation.