Upon completing training in professional Veterinary Medicine at the University of Agricultural Sciences in India, Nagaraj earned a PhD in Microbiology and Immunology at Chicago's Rosalind Franklin University. He completed his postdoc training with Jayakrishna Ambati at the University of Kentucky in 2015, with support from Beckman Initiative for Macular Research (BIMR) and NIH's pathway to Independence award (K99/R00) and then joined the faculty in 2015. In 2016, he came to University of Virginia as an Assistant Professor to continue the research program in the inflammatory mechanism of aging and ​age-related macular degeneration (AMD).