Sr Dr. Suraya Ismail is Director of Research at Khazanah Research Institute (KRI), a not-for-profit public policy research institute. She is a council member of the National Costs of Living Council (NACCOL), Ministry of Domestic Trade and Costs of Living (KPDN), and a member of the Panel of Experts (POE), Ministry of Housing and Local Government (KPKT). She sits on the Advisory Board of Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre (SEAC), London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), UK and has served as a Visiting Scholar at the Centre of Housing and Planning (CCHP), University of Cambridge. She has authored and co-authored book-length policy reports, published chapters in academic books and journals, provided policy briefs for governments at home and abroad, and was involved in collaborative work with agencies such as the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights (ACHR), UN-Habitat, Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) and Fundacion Metropoli.
Suraya was educated at the University of Reading, the University of Malaya and the Bartlett School, UCL. Her research interests include the history of economic growth; housing, cities and regional development, theory of the firm and institutional economics. She is a Chartered Surveyor with the Royal Institute of Surveyors, Malaysia (RISM).