Ray's research interests are generally broad, but his primary research expertise is in large-scale meteorology and regional climate. Particularly, Ray is interested in how large-scale environments influence extreme weather events and how these environments may evolve due to continued climate change.

Much of Ray’s early work has focused on precipitation variability over the northeastern United States (Sukhdeo et al. 2022), with special emphasis on understanding short-duration dry spells that impact the region (Sukhdeo et al. 2023) and their possible connections with longer-term drought periods.

Ray joined our group at UCLA after completing a B.S. in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at Stony Brook University, a M.S. in Marine and Atmospheric Science at Stony Brook University under the mentorship of Dr. Ping Liu, and a PhD in Atmospheric Sciences at UC Davis under the mentorship of Dr. Paul A. Ullrich and Dr. Richard Grotjahn.  As our group’s Fire Weather Postdoc (and recipient of an NSF AGS Postdoctoral Research Fellowship award), Ray will 1) develop an understanding of the thermodynamic and dynamic drivers of fire weather changes in the Western United States and 2) identify and project extreme climate event sequences most relevant to fire risk and behavior.