Shibani Ghosh

Shibani is an Associate Professor at Cornell University in the Division of Nutritional Sciences. Her research focuses on formulating and testing solutions targeting malnutrition in all its forms in women and children. Drawing on expertise in social science approaches, combined with epidemiological and biomedical methods, she has designed and implemented randomized controlled trials and longitudinal birth cohort studies focused on the maternal-infant life cycle. Her research aims to identify effective interventions and generate evidence to inform program and policy decisions in low- and middle-income countries.  

She has published extensively on the nutritional and environmental determinants of early childhood growth, with a focus on protein, amino acids, and factors such as environmental enteric dysfunction, water, sanitation, aflatoxins, and mycotoxins.  She has worked in Ghana, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Nepal, Malawi, Mozambique, Uganda, Jordan and Syria. Her future research interests are on understanding the interconnections between health and food systems and their implications for women and children, particularly in the context of dynamic environmental and climate changes that affect food systems, agriculture, nutrition and public health. 

Shibani earned her PhD in Nutrition Sciences from the School of Public Health at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.  Prior to Cornell, she was the Director of the USAID Feed the Future Food Systems for Nutrition Innovation Lab and Research Associate Professor in the Food and Nutrition Policies and Program Division at the Friedman School, Tufts University. Shibani serves as Co-Chair of the Global Nutrition Report and as an Advisory Member of the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) at Columbia University. She is the former Chair of the Council of USAID Feed the Future Innovation Labs. She has served across several advisory committees including the Government of France's Nutrition for Growth Independent Expert Panel, the Agriculture, Nutrition and Health (ANH) Academy, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO) and the USAID Food Safety Innovation Lab at Purdue University.

Key Words: global nutrition (maternal and infant), food systems, nutritional and environmental determinants, public health interventions and policy