Aria is a Ph.D. candidate at MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning and a guest student at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute's Marine Policy Center, where she researches marine planning. After she studied architecture and urban design at Georgia Tech and spent a few years practicing planning and urban design, she became interested in the application of urban planning tools to spaces that are not typically thought of as urban, especially insofar as they are used to rationalize territory in ways that perpetuate spatial injustice. At the moment, that means she is investigating marine planning processes and the interactions of ecological, economic, and political forces that shape submerged lands.