Shruti Punjabi

Shruti Punjabi is an applied social scientist and urban planner with a PhD in Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning from Virginia Tech’s School of Public and International Affairs. She is currently working as a Social Science Researcher at the Public Interest Technology Lab at Virginia Tech, where she supports research on how emerging technologies, including AI-supported decision tools, shape judgment, trust, accountability, equity, and decision-making in public-sector contexts.

Her broader research focuses on knowledge integration, transdisciplinary collaboration, science-policy translation, and participatory governance. She studies how researchers, practitioners, public institutions, and communities produce, translate, and use knowledge to address complex urban, environmental, and technological challenges. Her doctoral research examined knowledge integration in a large NSF-funded convergence research project on freshwater salinization and environmental decision-making, with attention to boundary work, collaboration, team dynamics, and the movement of knowledge across academic and practitioner settings.

Shruti has collaborated with public agencies, international organizations, and research institutions, including the Montgomery County Planning Department, the World Bank’s East Africa Regional Unit, the International Finance Corporation, the Fund for the City of New York, and Virginia Tech’s Occoquan Watershed Monitoring Lab. She has also participated in international climate and sustainability forums, including the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP28, where she contributed to discussions on transdisciplinary learning, climate justice, and evidence-based policymaking.

Research Interests

• Public Interest Technology
• AI Governance and Responsible Technology Use
• Knowledge Integration and Transdisciplinary Research
• Science-Policy Translation
• Urban and Environmental Governance
• Participatory Governance and Civic Engagement
• Environmental Justice and Climate Policy
• User-Centered Design
• Mixed-Methods
• Science of Team Science

Publications

• Punjabi, S., Misra, S., Grant, S. B., & Rippy, M. A. (2026). Boundary orchestration and knowledge integration in convergence research. Environmental Science & Policy, 181, 104421. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2026.104421
• Punjabi, S., Misra, S., Rippy, M. A., & Grant, S. B. (2026). Collaborative Communities, Brokers, and Integrators in a Convergence Research Team: A Social Network Analysis. Minerva. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-026-09643-0
• Punjabi, S., Misra, S., Rippy, M. A., Grant, S. B., Galappaththi, E., Lim, T., & Birkland, T. A. (2025). A conceptual framework for knowledge integration in cross-disciplinary collaborations. Environmental Science & Policy, 172, 104197. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2025.104197
• Basu, M., & Punjabi, S. (2020). Participation in solid waste management: Lessons from the Advanced Locality Management programme of Mumbai. Journal of Urban Management, 9(1), 93–103. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jum.2019.11.002