Project Staff

Prapti Bhandary is a Senior Research Analyst in the Environment and Production Technology Division at the International Food Policy Research Institute. Her research focuses on climate change adaptation/resilience, climate smart agriculture, ecosystem services and natural resource management with regional experience in Africa south of the Sahara and South Asia. She also has experience in designing, analyzing, and managing household surveys, facilitating enumerator trainings, and collaborating with developing country partners and government officials. Prior to joining IFPRI, her research focused on the role of institutions in managing climate change adaption in Nepal. Prapti holds a Master’s degree in Environmental Policy from Bard College’s Center for Environmental Policy and B.S. (Hons) in Environmental Science from Kathmandu University, Nepal.

Ruth Meinzen-Dick joined IFPRI in 1989. She is Coordinator of the CGIAR program on Collective Action and Property Rights (CAPRi). Her research deals with water resource management, land, forests, property rights, collective action, and the impact of agricultural research on poverty. She leads IFPRI’s Gender Task Force and co-leads work on strengthening women’s assets. Much of her research has been in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Nicola Cenacchi is a Research Analyst in the Environment and Production Technology Division, where he works on projects related to sustainable agricultural practices, adaptation to climate change and management of natural resources. He is co-author of the recent IFPRI-led global study “Food security in a world of natural resource scarcity”, which explores the productivity potential of a range of agricultural technologies and practices.

Dr P. K. Joshi joined as the senior Program Manager at the New Delhi office in April, 2011. Previous to this, he was the director, National Academy of Agricultural Research Management (NARRM). Earlier he held the positions of Director, National Centre for Agricultural Economics and Policy Research (NCAP), New Delhi. Dr. Joshi was also South Asia Coordinator at the International Food Policy Research Institute; and Senior Economist at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Patancheru. His area of research includes Technology Policy, Market and Institutional Economics.

Rowena Andrea Valmonte-Santos joined IFPRI as a Program Analyst in December 2003 under a joint appointment with the Communications Division and the Environment and Production Technology Division. She became a full time staff member as a Research Analyst in EPTD in August 2004. Her current work focuses on natural resource management with emphasis on food security in developing countries, participatory approaches to community based fisheries management and gender, threats and opportunities of climate change, and to some extent biosafety and biotechnology in selected Asian countries. She also conducted trainings on common tools used for surveys in social science research and water quality assessment for collaborators from government and non-government organizations and universities in Asia. Prior to joining IFPRI, Rowena worked as an Assistant Scientist in Policy Research and Impact Assessment Program, WorldFish Center, Malaysia. A citizen from the Philippines, Rowena received her MSc in Environmental Studies from the University of the Philippines Los Baños, Laguna, Philippines in 1993.

Suresh Babu Dr. Babu was educated at Agricultural Universities in Tamil Nadu, India (B.S. Agriculture; M.S. Agriculture) and at Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa (M.S. Economics and PhD Economics). Before joining IFPRI in 1992 as a Research Fellow, Dr. Babu was a Research Economist at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. Between 1989 and 1994 he spent 5 years in Malawi, Southern Africa on various capacities. He was Senior Food Policy Advisor to the Malawi Ministry of Agriculture on developing a national level Food and Nutrition Information System; an Evaluation Economist for the UNICEF-Malawi working on designing food and nutrition intervention programs; Coordinator of UNICEF/IFPRI food security program in Malawi; and a Senior Lecturer at the Bunda College of Agriculture, Malawi developing and teaching computer-based policy-oriented post graduate courses.

David Laborde has joined IFPRI, Washington DC, in 2007. He is a Research Fellow and co-leader of the “Globalization and markets” research project inside the Markets, Trade and Institutions division. Prior going to Washington, he was Economist at CEPII, Paris between 2003 and 2007 and lecturer at the University of Pau (France). His research interests include international trade, measurement and modeling of protectionism, multilateral and regional trade liberalization as well as agricultural issues. He has developed the MAcMapHS6 database on tariffs as well as several Partial and General Equilibrium Models applied to trade policy issues, including the MIRAGE model. He is an important contributor of the GTAP database. He has participated and organized training sessions for researchers and policy makers in several developing countries, with a special focus on sub-Saharan Africa. He has also worked as consultant for the European Commission, ECOWAS, the World Bank, the International Trade Center (Geneva) and USAID.

Shahnila Islam is a Senior Research Assistant in the Environment and Production Technology Division at IFPRI. She joined IFPRI in 2012 as a member of the IMPACT model development team. She graduated with a Master’s degree in Environmental Economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2009 and has Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Hanover College in Indiana. Prior to joining IFPRI she conducted research on the water-energy nexus as a Research Associate at the Institute of Water Policy at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.

Siwa Msangi is a Senior Research Fellow in the Environment and Production Technology Division, and co-leads IFPRIs research theme 1, which focuses on the major socio-economic and bio-physical drivers affecting agricultural production and trade, and their impacts on nutrition, poverty and the environment. While a great deal of his current research activity focuses on the economic and environmental impacts of biofuels, Siwa has a broader research background in natural resource management -- especially that of surface and groundwater management policy. Siwa also has interests in quantitative dynamic economics and the application of dynamic game theory to the study of user behavior in natural resource settings. A Tanzanian national, Siwa joined IFPRI in August 2004 as a post-doctoral fellow, after obtaining his degree in Agricultural & Resource Economics at the University of California at Davis. He earned a Masters degree in International Development Policy at the Food Policy Research Institute at Stanford University, where he also received an undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering.

Man Li is a Research Fellow at the Environment and Production Technology Division of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). She is a researcher working at the intersection of land economics, spatial modeling, and economic geography. Man holds a PhD in Natural Resource and Environmental Economics and a PhD Minor in statistics, Oregon State University.

Daniel Mason-D’Croz is a Research Analyst at IFPRI and a member of the IMPACT model development team since November 2010. He graduate with a Masters in International Development and International Economics from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in 2010. His undergraduate work focused on International Business and Computer Science at the University of Nebraska’s Raikes School of Computer Science and Business Management. Prior to IFPRI, he served as a Research Associate at the U.S. International Trade Commission. Additionally he worked at the University of Nebraska reviewing the effects of biofuels on food, as well as serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Bolivia from 2004 to 2007.

Claudia Ringler was appointed Deputy Division Director of IFPRI’s Environment and Production Technology Division in 2011. She currently co-leads the Institute’s water research program and is also a basin theme leader in the CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (http://wle.cgiar.org/). Dr. Ringler received her PhD in Agricultural Economics from the Center for Development Research, Bonn University, Germany, and her MA in International and Development Economics from Yale University. Her research interests are water resources management-in particular, river basin modeling for policy analysis and agricultural; and natural resource policy focused at sustainable agricultural productivity growth. Over the last several years she has also undertaken research on the impacts of global warming for developing country agriculture and on appropriate adaptation and mitigation options. Dr. Ringler has field experience across Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. In Asia, she has worked on natural resource management and agricultural technology policy in Bangladesh, Cambodia, China (Yellow River Basin), India, Indonesia, Laos, Pakistan and Vietnam (Dong Nai and Mekong River Basins). In sub-Saharan Africa, she has worked mainly in Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya and South Africa and on the Limpopo, Nile and Volta River Basins; and in Latin America on Chile (Maipo River Basin) and Brazil (Pirapama Basin). Ringler has been part of a series of Project and Program Advisory and Steering Committees; and International Assessments, such as the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development, and the UNEP-led GEO-V Assessment. She is currently a member of the Scientific Steering Committee of the Global Water Systems Project (GWSP). Dr. Ringler has more than 80 publications in the areas of water management, global food and water security, natural resource constraints to global food production, and on synergies of climate change adaptation and mitigation.

Sherman Robinson is a Senior Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), and Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Sussex. He is also a visiting professor at the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in the Netherlands. He joined the Economics Department at Sussex in 2004 and then accepted a joint appointment with IDS in 2005. He worked at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) from 1993 to 2004 as Director of the Trade and Macroeconomics Division (1993 – 2003) and Institute Fellow (2003 – 2004), and he rejoined IFPRI as a Senior Research Fellow in 2011. Before joining IFPRI in 1993, he was: Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California, Berkeley (1983-1994); Economist, Senior Economist and Division Chief in the Research Department of the World Bank (1977-1983); Assistant Professor of Economics at Princeton University (1971-1977); and Lecturer in Economics at the London School of Economics (1969-1971). He has been a consultant to the World Bank and has held visiting senior-staff appointments at the Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture; the U.S. Congressional Budget Office; and the President s Council of Economic Advisers (in the Clinton administration), where he largely worked on trade issues, including regional trade agreements, GATT/WTO negotiations, and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Timothy Thomas has been serving as a research fellow at IFPRI in the Environment and Production Technology Division since March 2010. His work at IFPRI involves using a variety of models to assess the impact of climate change on agriculture, with the goal of identifying policies that will help farmers adapt to the change. He is also working to assess policies designed to mitigate climate change by modifying greenhouse gas emissions from the AFOLU (agriculture, forestry, and land use change) sector.In 2013, three books he co-edited that dealt with climate change and African agriculture were published. In addition to the books, he has authored related journal articles, op-eds, blogs, and studies and has made presentations on the topic in various fora throughout the world. Prior to coming to IFPRI, he worked as an economist-consultant for 11 years at the World Bank, focusing mostly on tropical deforestation and the impact of market nearness on economic development. He earned his Ph.D. in Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of Maryland in 2003.

Keith Wiebe is a Senior Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington DC, where he leads a research program on Global Futures and Strategic Foresight. Prior to joining IFPRI in October 2013, he was Deputy Director of the Agricultural Development Economics Division of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, where he managed a program of economic research and policy analysis for food security and sustainable development, and helped coordinate preparation of FAO’s annual flagship reports on the State of Food and Agriculture and the State of Food Insecurity in the World. Previously he was Deputy Director of the Resource and Rural Economics Division of the US Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service in Washington, DC. He received his B.A. in economics from Carleton College, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in agricultural economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His areas of particular interest include land tenure, natural resource use and conservation, agricultural productivity and food security.

Liangzhi You, senior research fellow, joined IFPRI in 1999 to conduct research on agricultural science and technology policy and on agroecosystem. Liangzhi earned a B.S. in hydraulic engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing, and an M.S. in environmental economics and Ph.D. in civil and environmental engineering from Johns Hopkins University. Before joining IFPRI, Liangzhi was a research assistant at Johns Hopkins University.

Tingju Zhu joined IFPRI in June, 2005 as a postdoctoral fellow in the Environment and Production Technology Division. He obtained his Ph.D. in water resources engineering (minor in agricultural and resource economics) from the University of California, Davis, and M.S. and B.S. from Tsinghua University and Wuhan University of Hydraulic and Electric Engineering (Wuhan University) of China, respectively, with both in hydrology and water resources. Dr. Zhu's research at IFPRI focuses on the effects of climate change on water resources and agricultural production. His recent research includes global hydrology modeling for land use and climate change impact assessment, long-term projections of global water demand and supply, impacts of climate variability on agricultural production, and integrated modeling of global water and food systems. Tingju is a citizen of China.