Dr. Jayaraj Vijaya Kumaran or fondly called as Dr. Raj by his colleagues is a senior lecturer in the Natural Resource Science Program of the Faculty of Earth Science, University Malaysia Kelantan (UMK). He graduated with a BSc (hons) Animal Resource Science and Management in 2004 and MSc in Quantitative Statistics and Molecular Genetics in 2009 from University Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) and earned his doctorate degree in Mammalogy from University Sains Malaysia in 2016. He is passionate about taxonomy, behavioral and conservation of small mammals in Malaysia and has been involved in many local scientific expeditions to document small mammal diversity in Malaysian forests. He has 32 research publications ranging from taxonomy, microbial diversity, conservation status and diversity of mammals and also phylogenetics.

Small mammal taxonomy Phylogenetics Small mammal behavior Microbial diversity Metagenomics