Faculty

Chris Barrett

315 Warren Hall
cbb2@cornell.edu

Member of the following Graduate Fields:

• Applied Economics and Management
• Conservation & Sustainable Development
• Economics
• International Agriculture and Rural Development
• International Development
• Natural Resources

My research interests are broad ranging. But ultimately they boil down to an interest in using economic analysis to reduce unnecessary human suffering. Since most extreme poverty and food insecurity occurs in rural areas of the developing world, that’s where I work, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Because most of the world’s poor depend fundamentally on food systems to provide a livelihood and an adequate diet, my research group tackles a wide range of food system problems related to agricultural productivity, natural resources management in agroecosystems, food marketing systems, risk management, the institutions that govern resource use, production and exchange, and economic and agricultural policy. I am a fervent believer in the importance of field-based research and outreach, both to contextualize rigorous analysis and to ensure that scientific findings get back to practitioners who can act on those results to address the underlying causes of unnecessary poverty and food insecurity.

The Food Systems and Poverty Reduction IGERT offers an outstanding opportunity for exceptional, highly-motivated Ph.D. candidates to work together with a large group of us faculty at Cornell to help make progress on the complex problems that cause food systems to underperform their potential, to trap huge numbers of people in persistent poverty, and to degrade the natural environment. I am eager to work with students and faculty who share this passion and a commitment to apply the cutting-edge toolkits from our scientific disciplines to address these scientific and societal challenges.

Larry Blume

Uris Hall
lb19@cornell.edu

Member of the following Graduate Fields:

• Economics
• Information Science

I am interested in how social systems work. Social systems encompass a wide variety of types of social organization. Some markets, for instance, are highly centralized, and any one trader can interact directly or at short remove with large numbers of people throughout the world. Other markets are more loosely organized. In these markets traders are connected directly with only a few other traders, and most links between traders are indirect. Both types of market organizations behave more or less the same when they are working well, but have their own particular patterns of failure under stress. Markets in turn only work because they are situated within other social structures that enforce the norms of good market behavior. Failures in these systems have effects in markets, and vice versa.

The study of social systems is inherently interdisciplinary. An economist by training, I have worked with biologists, sociologists and computer scientists. The multidisciplinary approach of the Food Systems and Poverty Reduction IGERT is evident throughout Cornell, and makes the University and Ithaca a very exciting place to be.

Kathryn Boor

413 Stocking Hall
kjb4@cornell.edu

Member of the following Graduate Fields:

• Food Science and Technology
• Microbiology
• Environmental Toxicology

The safety and wholesomeness of foods within a food system are an important reflection of the adequacy of the system to support the population that depends on that food supply. A high prevalence of unsafe foods is as undesirable as an inadequate food supply, because both ultimately result in poor human nutrition and health. Diseases transmitted through foods interact in a vicious cycle with malnutrition, each compounding the public health burden of the other. The predominant causes of food-borne illnesses are biological disease agents (bacteria, viruses, fungi, and gastrointestinal parasites), but chemical and physical contaminants are also a concern. Diarrhea continues to be a major cause of morbidity and mortality for children around the globe. Ultimately, because the safety of foods in a given food system is a critical factor affecting public health, strategies that effectively reduce food-borne illnesses by enhancing the safety of local, national, and international food systems will yield tangible improvements in the global public health profile.

The specific foci of my research program are to identify and characterize factors that affect the presence and persistence of undesirable organisms in food products intended for human consumption. Our strategies integrate the tools of molecular biology and phenotypic microbiology to: (i) explore factors linking the ability of bacteria to survive under various conditions throughout food systems, including in foods and in food processing environments, with bacterial ability to cause human and animal disease; and (ii) rapidly identify and track spoilage and pathogenic bacteria in food systems. One key strategy for strengthening food safety systems and reducing food-borne illnesses is to develop effective food-borne illness surveillance systems to collect, analyze, and share epidemiological data. These data must then be used as a basis for setting priorities on the most critical food-borne risks that need to be addressed in order to realize the highest impact. The data generated by our research team contributes to these ends.

Carol Colfer

Warren Hall
c.colfer@cgiar.org

I’m a visiting fellow at the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development, but I’ve also retained my post as Senior Associate and anthropologist with the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) in Bogor, Indonesia. I collaborate with Cornell faculty in the IGERT program on food systems in East Africa, and interact with students, one-on-one, often on issues related to adaptive collaborative management, particularly in Indonesia.

I have many years of ethnographic experience in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and the United States, as well as global, forest-related experience in criteria and indicators, adaptive collaborative management and governance. My interests include gender and diversity, people and forests, health and population, and conservation and development issues.

This year, I have completed the editing of a book, “Local Governance of Tropical Landscapes,” with Jean-Laurent Pfund (to be published by Earthscan, London); and I am currently working on a survey relating to the perceptions of marginalized people in forests about the rules and regulations under which they live.

For more information, check out my webpage: http://earth01.net/CJPColfer/

Richard Dudley

17 Warren Hall
rgd6@cornell.edu

Adjunct Associate Professor
Cornell International Institute for Food Agriculture and Development

I moved back to the USA in 2009 after living and working mostly outside the USA since 1983, most of that time in Indonesia. My training in fisheries led to my work with small-scale fisheries management in marine, estuarine, and fresh waters. My interests and experience also include protected area management and conservation, and marine sciences education. Since 1998 I have been using system dynamics modeling to investigate policy questions related to natural resource management and related international development issues including: fishery management, illegal logging, REDD, corruption, and the problem of dual salary scales on international projects. In addition to my work in Indonesia, I have held long term fishery positions in Oman, Zambia, and Malawi. Prior to much of my international work I held university teaching/research positions in the USA.

For more details see: http://earth01.net/RGDudley/

John Duxbury

904 Bradfield Hall
jmd17@cornell.edu

Member of the following Graduate Field:

• Soil and Crop Sciences

My research interests range from basic to applied science aspects of soil, environmental and crop production sciences. I have a long-standing commitment to better link agriculture to human nutrition and health outcomes through diversification and improved productivity of crop production systems. I have done research in most regions of the world with emphasis on South Asia. Most recently, I have worked to improve the livelihoods of small farmers in Kenya and Bangladesh who are food insecure. In many situations, I find that farmers need knowledge that is new to them but may be well known to agricultural scientists to improve the output from their farms. I believe that a successful future for agriculture development will depend on utilizing resources more sustainably and with improved efficiency, together with strategies to adjust to more variable weather patterns caused by climate change.

Parfait Eloundou-Enyegue

334 Warren Hall
pme7@cornell.edu

Member of the following Graduate Fields:

• Development Sociology
• International Development
• Africana

My current research interests focus on four general areas: schooling, population change, inequality/poverty, and development processes. I apply tools of demographic analysis and sociological research to study trends in these four areas, with an emphasis on sub-Saharan Africa. Because I view schooling processes and education institutions as central to (and reflecting) much of the current changes in this region, I have spent most of my last five research years working to understand transformations in schooling systems and their implications for population and inequality, within and across African nations. I am also interested in research on the so-called “demographic dividend” i.e. the opportunities for poverty reduction that are presented by the current demographic changes in Africa. My research is funded from a variety of sources and it involves collaboration with partners in sub-Saharan Africa.

William E. (Bill) Fry

303B Plant Science Bldg.
wef1@cornell.edu

Professor of Plant Pathology and Plant-Microbe Biology, International Professor
Shown here (on right) with Greg Forbes (International Potato Center) at a potato field in the Andes of Peru

Member of the following Graduate Field:

• Plant Pathology and Plant-Microbe Biology

My research and teaching have emphasized biology and management of the late blight disease of potato and tomato caused by Phytophthora infestans. This pathogen is often dramatically important worldwide. Our lab has detected worldwide migrations of this pathogen and has predicted the implications of these migrations. We are actively characterizing pathogen populations as a prerequisite to developing management approaches. And we are developing technologies to employ resources (host resistance, fungicide) most efficiently in the suppression of this disease.

Miguel Gomez

246 Warren Hall
mig7@cornell.edu

Member of the following Graduate Fields:

• Agricultural Economics

The objective of my research and outreach program is to enhance market opportunities for horticultural products, benefiting producers, food processors/distributors and consumers. My areas of expertise focus on marketing, price analysis and applied industrial organization. My current research focuses on modeling consumer choices in retailing with emphasis on produce; examining coordination and collaboration among supply chain members to improve long-run profitability; measuring tradeoffs between environmental and economic performance across alternative supply chain structures to support private and public decisions; understanding the links between customer satisfaction and sales in specialty crop retailing to increase distribution channel profits; and identifying challenges and opportunities for smallholder growers of specialty crops in low income countries to participate in modern supply chains.

The IGERT program offers a unique opportunity to study the links across supply chain efficiency, sustainability and poverty alleviation. I look forward to exploring the tradeoffs and complementarities between these multiple dimensions influencing the ability of supply chains to integrate small growers to the market.

Bob Howarth

309 Corson Hall
howarth@cornell.edu

Member of the following Graduate Fields:

• Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
• Natural Resources
• Soil and Crop Sciences
• Environmental Quality Engineering

I am a biogeochemist who works on human alteration of nutrient cycles at local, regional, and global scales. My original training was in oceanography, and I remain very interested in how nutrient pollution — particularly nitrogen pollution from agriculture — affects coastal oceans. However, I also work on nutrient fluxes through watersheds, large and small, and on the effects of excess nutrients on freshwater resources and on human health. For the past few years, I have been chairing the International SCOPE Biofuels Project, an effort chartered by the International Council of Sciences to evaluate the consequences of biofuels on the environment. I also serve as an advisor to UNEP on this topic. Most of my previous research has been in North America and Europe, although I have some strong interactions with scientists from many developing countries through the Biofuels Project. I am extremely interested in becoming more involved in sub-Saharan Africa for two reasons: 1) biofuels production there is likely to explode in the coming years, and I would like to see this done in a way that maximizes societal good and minimizes environmental harm; and 2) increased use of fertilizer is necessary in Africa to achieve the increased crop production needed to alleviate hunger, and again, I would like to see this done in a way that minimizes environmental harm and adequately protects water resources. I am tremendously excited about the new Food Systems and Poverty Reduction IGERT because of its multidisciplinary approach to the critical issue of reducing hunger and poverty.

Karim-Aly Kassam, PhD

8A Fernow Hall
ksk28@cornell.edu
http://www.dnr.cornell.edu/kassam

Member of the following Graduate Fields:

• American Indian Studies
• International Agriculture and Rural Development
• Natural Resources

My research is focussed on the relationship between socio-cultural and ecological systems. In teaching activities, I explore intellectual pluralism through multiple ways of knowing, indigenous human ecology, as well as the relationship between biological and cultural diversity. My objective is to seamlessly merge teaching with applied research in the service of communities. This applied research examines the complex connectivity of human and environmental relations, food sovereignty, indigenous ways of knowing, sustainable livelihoods, and climate change. It is conducted in partnership with indigenous communities in the Alaskan, Canadian, and Russian Arctic and Sub-Arctic; the Pamir Mountains in Afghanistan and Tajikistan; and the rain forest in the south of India. By investigating the relationship between biological diversity and cultural diversity, my students and I seek to expand the foundations of the notion of pluralism.

An unprecedented confluence of issues face humanity at the dawn of the third millennium. While tenuously grappling with dramatic climate change and its socio-cultural and ecological consequences, we simultaneously need to address a structural economic crisis resulting in a global recession, and growing demand for alternative energy sources to sustain food and livelihood security. Despite the fact that these three issues are intimately related, there is no historical model from which to articulate an effective response to the convergence of climate change, economic crisis, and growing energy demands. While my research is primarily in other parts of the globe, these core issues are directly relevant to Africa, where I was born and have family. This Food Systems and Poverty Reduction IGERT offers us the opportunity to work together in developing pragmatic insights and practical approaches to addressing issues of food sovereignty in Africa. I firmly believe that students are not only consumers of information but producers of insight. They change paradigms.

Johannes Lehmann

909 Bradfield Hall
cl273@cornell.edu

Member of the following Graduate Fields:

• Soil and Crop Sciences
• International Agriculture and Rural Development

My program stretches from the detailed investigation of processes that lead to soil degradation and improvements by soil organic matter management to systems-scale assessment of sustainability. I am specifically interested to make the most of scarce biomass resources to improve soils. For example, we integrate household cooking with crop residue and soil management. In our projects we seek strong collaborations across disciplines.

Pete Loucks

311 Hollister Hall
DPL3@cornell.edu

Member of the following Graduate Fields:

• Civil and Environmental Engineering
• Regional Science
• Public Policy and Administration
• International Development
• Water Resources

My training in universities includes forestry and forest management, environmental systems engineering, and economics. I currently teach courses in public systems modeling, water resource systems, and engineering economics. My current research focuses on the management and ecologic and economic restoration of degraded river basins. In Africa I’m involved in an advisory role in the development of computer models being developed by experts from the 10 Nile Basin countries to be used to study alternative ways of allocating the water from the Nile River to the Nile Basin Countries. Both Ethiopia and Kenya, among most other Nile Basin countries, could benefit from more water and using that water more productively to reduce poverty and other related social and economic problems. I am soon to become involved in reservoir re-operation studies in both Ghana and Nigeria, where we hope to find more ecologically as well as economically improved reservoir operation rules for some of their major reservoir systems. Obviously there are numerous other basins needing attention, and I too hope you will be part of our combined team addressing these problems.

Natalie Mahowald, PhD

Snee 2140
mahowald@cornell.edu

Member of the following Graduate Fields:

• Atmospheric Sciences
• Geological Sciences

I am trained as an atmospheric scientist, and have spent most of my career looking at feedbacks between climate, biogeochemistry and atmospheric constituents. Much of my work has focused on understanding the atmospheric desert dust cycle, and how humans have modulated emissions of desert dust globally through land use and climate change. The generation of wind blown dust in arid regions degrades soil quality as well as local air quality. In addition, this atmospheric desert dust can perturb atmospheric radiation and directly impact climate, or may fertilize ocean and land biogeochemistry far downwind. My tools include global climate models and synthesis of data.

While agriculture in East Africa is focused on producing enough food for the people, it has implications for climate through impacts on emissions of desert dust and green house gases like carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane. In addition, future food production in East Africa will be changed from climate. Thus understanding the big picture of global climate change impacts and mitigation in the context of East Africa will be my contribution for the Food Systems and Poverty Reduction IGERT.

Beth A. Medvecky, PhD

31 Warren Hall
bam44@cornell.edu

IGERT Associate Director, CIIFAD Assistant Director

Member of the following Graduate Fields:

• None

My academic training is in crop and soil science and pest management. My current research focuses on understanding interactions among soil fertility, crop management practices and soilborne pests and diseases in smallholder intensive mixed farming systems in Africa. My passion is using adaptive research and experiential learning approaches to help farmers gain the capacity to better manage their soil fertility and food security challenges. I have more than 17 years experience doing adaptive research and grassroots development work with NGOs in Kenya and consider myself more of a development practioner than an academic.

I am a Research Associate not a faculty member. This means that I will not be able to serve on anyone’s PhD committee, although all IGERT students will interact with me a lot.

Michael Milgroom

357 Plant Science Building
mgm5@cornell.edu

Member of the following Graduate Field:

• Plant Pathology & Plant-Microbe Biology

My research interests are focused primarily on mycotoxins that contaminate food and affect the health of populations in developing countries. In particular, I am interested in aflatoxins in maize in East Africa. Aflatoxin is best known as a carcinogen that causes liver cancer even from relatively low levels of exposure. In many parts of Africa and Asia, the environmental conditions are highly favorable for the accumulation of aflatoxin and acute outbreaks occur periodically resulting in aflatoxin poisoning and human mortality. Perhaps more importantly, chronic exposure to aflatoxin is common in developing countries. Chronic exposure to aflatoxin has recently been shown to suppress the immune system and stunt growth. Thus, aflatoxins may adversely affect human health and indirectly reduce economic development. We are studying aflatoxins in maize in Kenya because it is the staple diet and is frequently contaminated with aflatoxins. The ultimate objective of our research is to identify the most effective and feasible interventions to reduce aflatoxin exposure for high-risk populations. Our interdisciplinary team is conducting a pilot project to quantify the relative impact of agronomic, environmental, and behavioral factors on aflatoxin accumulation in maize and exposure in humans.

Stephen L. Morgan

358 Uris Hall
slm45@cornell.edu

Member of the following Graduate Field:

• Sociology

As a sociologist, I specialize in the study of poverty and inequality, with a special focus on research methodology. Although most of my substantive research has focused on educational inequalities in industrial and post-industrial societies, I devote a small (but growing) portion of my research agenda to the study of similar topics in sub-Saharan Africa. This interest grows out of my boyhood experience as a primary school student in Kano, Nigeria, and I now return almost yearly to Kano to conduct research on social networks and the educational and occupational outcomes of young men and women.

The substantive foci of the Food Systems and Poverty Reduction IGERT differs somewhat from the topics of my own past research, but I am an avid consumer of the important work of others engaged in this project. I very much enjoy working with students on these topics, and I hope to be able to provide a perspective from sociology and from my own field experiences to the broad training program that Cornell can now offer.

Kevin Morrison

315 White Hall
morrison@cornell.edu

Member of the following Graduate Field:

• Government

My research interests are in the broad area of the political economy of development, which consists of examining how political and economic phenomena relate to one another, using the tools of both political science and economics. My work has been related to the poverty reduction side of Food Systems and Poverty Reduction, examining how redistributional conflicts in society affect transitions between democracies and dictatorships. I have been particularly interested in how revenues from foreign aid and natural resources (like oil) are used by governments to alleviate those redistributional conflicts. This work has taken me to Kenya, Mexico, and Bolivia. My other work related to poverty reduction includes involvement with the World Bank’s World Development Report 2000/01: Attacking Poverty and a recent paper on the effect electoral institutions can have on poverty reduction. I am very much looking forward to working with students in the IGERT project, as well as learning from them and the other faculty about the Food Systems side of the project.

Rebecca Nelson

303A Plant Science
rjn7@cornell.edu

Member of the following Graduate Fields:

• Plant Pathology & Plant-Microbe Biology
• Plant Breeding
• International Agriculture and Rural Development

My research interests have to do with helping people reduce their crop losses. My lab works on quantitative disease resistance in maize. We are trying to understand host-pathogen interactions at a practical level and at an academic level. How can we help breeders make better use of the fabulous genetic diversity in maize to produce more resilient varieties? How do plants defend themselves, and how can that understanding better inform our practical work? One of the fungal pathogens of interest to our group is Aspergillus flavus, which causes ear rots of maize. This pathogen also produces a toxic metabolite, aflatoxin, which is a public health problem in African food systems. My group participates in a multi-disciplinary effort to tackle this problem in Kenya.

There’s more to life than fungi, some might say. To engage with larger issues of food security, I also serve as Scientific Director for The McKnight Foundation’s Collaborative Crop Research Program. In this role, I work with diverse colleagues to support research projects in food-insecure regions in Africa and the Andes. I very much look forward to participating in the Food Systems and Poverty Reduction IGERT in a similar spirit.

Daryl Nydam

C2 562 Veterinary Medical Center
dvn2@cornell.edu

Member of the following Graduate Fields:

• Animal Science
• Comparative Biomedical Science
• International Agriculture and Rural Development

I am a veterinarian using integrative epidemiologic approaches to animal (predominately ruminants) well-being, production efficiency, and farm sustainability. Our research aims to optimize the efficiency of production such that the least input resources can be used to achieve the maximum desirable outputs. My research group endeavors to illuminate the constraints mammals face as they transition from late gestation to early lactation (e.g. milking cows) and from life in utero to neonates (e.g. calves), so that they are healthy and thus contribute to efficient, profitable, and environmentally sound production of safe foods and public health. We are currently working to identify nutritional, management, and pharmacologic strategies to help these transitions. One of the constraints we study are zoonotic pathogens (i.e. those that can be transmitted between animals and humans), particularly those that are associated with diarrhea (e.g. Cryptosporidium, Salmonella etc.). Diarrhea continues to be a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. In resource-poor countries, food security, agricultural production, and pathogens all play a pivotal role in their health and development. I’ve been fortunate enough to do this work in 6 of 7 continents, with students and in places where the work from the Food Systems and Poverty Reduction IGERT are important.

Alice Pell

115 Day Hall
ap19@cornell.edu

Member of the following Graduate Fields:

• Animal Science
• International Agriculture and Rural Development
• Microbiology
• Nutrition
• Public Affairs

My research focuses on the roles of livestock in African and South Asian smallholder farming systems. I am especially interested in livestock nutrition and the roles of animals in nutrient cycling and maintenance of soil fertility. Inadequate nutrition and decreases in soil productivity currently constrain animal and crop production in African farming systems. Understanding how farmers manage their livestock in relation to other components of their systems is an important step towards improving livestock and soil productivity and reducing poverty and malnutrition.

I am currently serving as Vice Provost of International Relations. While this limits my capacity to serve as a primary faculty advisor to IGERT trainees, I will interact with the group frequently and can serve as a minor member of graduate committees. I am also happy to assist students whose interests overlap with mine to identify potential faculty advisors in the Graduate Fields I represent.

David Pelletier

212 Savage Hall
dlp5@cornell.edu

Member of the following Graduate Fields:

• Nutrition
• Epidemiology
• Public Affairs
• Anthropology

David Pelletier is anassociate professor of nutrition policy in the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell University. His research, teaching and public engagement focuses on food and nutrition problems in developing countries and the U.S., including improved methods for policy and program analysis, development, implementation and evaluation. Specific research topics relate to the causes and consequences of maternal and child malnutrition, fortification of soy sauce in China, policy options for iron overload in the U.S., regulation of genetically engineered foods by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the design and evaluation of participatory planning processes at national and community levels. He has conducted or supervised research and project work in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Lesotho, Indonesia, China, Bolivia, Guatemala and Peru and has consulted on nutrition strategy development with the World Bank, USAID, UNICEF, WHO, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Academy for Educational Development and the International Food Policy Research Institute.

Per Pinstrup-Andersen

305 Savage Hall
pp94@cornell.edu

Member of the following Graduate Fields:

• Nutrition
• Applied Economics and Management
• Cornell Institute for Public Affairs

My research, teaching and graduate student advising focus on government policy for global and national food systems. I am particularly interested in the impact of trade policies and other aspects of globalization on poverty and nutrition and how policies and institutions can modify such impacts. I am also interested in the interaction between the food system and human health and nutrition and the role of science in promoting sustainable food security through agricultural development. I am coordinating a program to strengthen the effectiveness and relevance of university-level training in policies for the global and national food systems. As part of this program, 61 case studies have been developed and posted on the web for open access (http://cip.cornell.edu/gfs) and published in a three-volume book. These case studies are being used at Cornell and several other universities in Sub-Saharan Africa, South and East Asia and the United States. More case studies are being developed. Some of these case studies will be used in courses for the IGERT students along with a textbook on food system policies my co-author Derrill Watson and I plan to complete by mid-2010.

Alison Power

331 Corson Hall
agp4@cornell.edu

Member of the following Graduate Fields:

• Conservation & Sustainable Development
• Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
• Entomology
• International Agriculture and Rural Development
• Latin American Studies
• Science & Technology Studies

I study ecological processes in agricultural and natural ecosystems, with a particular focus on insect herbivores and pathogens. My research interests include biodiversity conservation in managed ecosystems, interactions between agricultural and natural ecosystems, agroecology, the ecology and evolution of plant pathogens, impacts of global change on disease dynamics, and ecosystem services from agriculture. Some of my current research explores how plant community structure in both natural and agricultural ecosystems influences the epidemiology of insect-borne pathogens of plants. I have examined how cropping system, plant species diversity, host genetic diversity, and plant density and dispersion affect disease spread. My students and I have addressed these issues in agricultural systems in the northeast U.S., Central America, the Caribbean, southeast Asia, and Africa. In recent years, I have used the aphid-transmitted barley yellow dwarf virus, a widespread pathogen of crops and grasses, as a model system to address other aspects of the interactions between viruses, insect vectors and host plants. Projects have addressed virus spread between crop hosts and wild host plants, the impacts of virus infection on wild grass hosts, and the ecological risks of transgenic virus resistance in crops. I have recently begun a project examining the impacts of climate change on pests and pathogens of maize in Africa. Overall, this work is intended to contribute to the design of productive, sutainable food systems.

Susan Riha

1110 Bradfield Hall
sjr4@cornell.edu

Member of the following Graduate Fields:

• Water Resources
• Soil and Crop Science
• International Agriculture and Rural Development

My research program addresses the dynamic interactions of plants with their physical environment. The general approach has been to use biophysical models to analyze experimental data collected as part of growth chamber, greenhouse and field studies. The studies undertaken have contributed to our understanding of the impact of flooding on plant water relations, the impact of soil drying on plant growth and water use, and the importance of different surfaces to vapor transport under various crop, forestry and agroforestry systems. The process of utilizing biophysical models to analyze experimental data has in turn layed the groundwork for me to use plant-environmental simulation models to address a number of applied problems. These include such issues as the response of agriculture to climate change, the impact of climate variability on crop yield, improving the use of stored soil water by crops growing in a semi-arid environment, devising drought stress indicators for forest productivity and biodiversity, and enhancing water use in agroforestry systems. As my research program centers on soil-plant atmosphere systems and involves both modeling and experimental work, the studies often cross boundaries between more traditional areas of research (for example, soil physics and plant physiology, or agronomy and forestry) and research methodologies (experimental and theoretical).

David E. Sahn

B16 MVR Hall
des16@cornell.edu

Member of the following Graduate Fields:

• Applied Economics and Management
• Economics
• International Development
• Nutrition
• Policy Analysis and Management

My research is focused on issues of poverty, inequality, and the economics of health, nutrition and education. My primary interest is in understanding the determinants of schooling outcomes and cognitive achievement; examining household decision making and the impact of household choices on health and nutrition outcomes; and exploring methods for analyzing the multiple dimensions of inequality and poverty. My empirical research involves estimating behavioral models that rely on innovative household survey data, and is concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa. Much of this work involves trying to understand the constraints to, and opportunities to promote human capital accumulation and improved living standards. I am also actively engaged in working directly as an advisor to various international organizations and governments, including most recently in Madagascar and Senegal, helping translate research findings into policies designed to affectively alleviate malnutrition, improve schooling outcomes and reduce risky behaviors that have adverse consequences, such as HIV/AIDS . Furthermore, I am actively involved in numerous capacity building initiatives and partnerships with African universities and research institutes, including my longstanding work with the African Economic Research Consortium in Nairobi, Kenya.

Tammo Steenhuis, PhD

206 Riley Robb
tss1@cornell.edu

Member of the following Graduate Fields:

• Biological and Environmental Engineering
• Conservation & Sustainable Development
• Geological Sciences
• International Agriculture and Rural Development
• Soil and Crop Sciences
• Water Resources

My training is as a “water engineer” and I will contribute my knowledge about water to this project. I have worked extensively during the last six years on watershed issues in Ethiopia, where I am one of the core faculty members in the Cornell/Bahir Dar Master’s of Professional studies program in Integrated Watershed Management. My students and I are concerned about issues related to water availability and management, especially in water short areas. We were quite surprised recently to find that gully erosion began in the flat part of the landscape and not on the steep hillsides.

Both Ethiopia and Kenya have large areas that are water short and by using the available water more productive, poverty-related problems can be reduced. However, that is only technical part and social and economic issues are just as important for finding solutions that actually might be used by the affected people. I hope you will join us.

Rebecca (Becky) Stoltzfus, PhD

120 Savage Hall
rjs62@cornell.edu

Member of the following Graduate Fields:

• Nutrition
• International Development

My research focuses on the causes and consequences of malnutrition in women and children in low-income countries. Although I have been involved in research in many parts of the world, the majority of my research experience is in rural Tanzania and Zimbabwe. I have conducted numerous randomized trials of interventions, attempting to clarify promising nutrition and health interventions, and to quantify their effects. Currently my work continues to use strong research designs to address broader questions that include not only an intervention, but combinations of interventions and also delivery systems for interventions.

The IGERT program offers both faculty and students the opportunity to investigate in new ways the linkages between poverty, the food system, and health and nutrition. I look forward to interdisciplinary thinking about how food system interventions can be leveraged to improve family health and nutrition, and the development of human capital.

Alex Travis

Baker Institute for Animal Health
ajt32@cornell.edu

Member of the following Graduate Fields:

• Zoology & Wildlife Conservation
• Molecular and Integrative Physiology
• Comparative Biomedical Sciences

My over-riding interest is wildlife conservation. I pursue this through several different types of scientific research that operate on different time frames. Our work that has the most immediate impact, and which is of most relevance to the IGERT program, concerns holistic approaches to conservation that emphasize rural livelihoods and food security.

As a veterinarian, I am very interested in how rural people often use livestock as “savings accounts.” In addition to providing draft power and food, livestock can be sold in times of financial stress or food insecurity. Although livestock production can certainly have negative impacts on local environments, sustainable production can have positive impacts, such as lessening the need for poaching for bushmeat sale/consumption. Factors such as nutrition, water, and housing can have dramatic impacts on production. Animal disease can also exert a major influence on rural people, both in terms of the livestock themselves, as well as in terms of their transmission to humans and wildlife (which can then serve as reservoirs). These complex interactions can have dramatic impacts on attempts to conserve wildlife, especially in the context of transnational parks that facilitate the movement of agricultural and wild animals.

As a reproductive biologist, I also run a laboratory that performs basic scientific investigations that can lead to the development of new contraceptive methods. I am also actively engaged in the development of new technologies based on animal stem cells to preserve genetic diversity.

Mike F. Walter

207 Riley Robb
mfw2@cornell.edu

Member of the following Graduate Field:

• Biological and Environmental Engineering

I joined the Cornell Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering in 1974 with a research, teaching, and extension program focused on agriculture water management. Prior to coming to Cornell I worked as a civil engineer in water resource planning in Illinois and as a dairy farm manager in Wisconsin. My graduate students have done research in more than a dozen different countries, initially directed primarily at irrigation systems but more recently on water management for rain-fed agriculture. I lived for three years in India where I assisted six universities in development of water research programs and managed a USAID agricultural water project in Himachel Pradesh. I served from 1986 to 1992 as Director of Research for the $35 million Irrigation Support Project for Asia and the Near East. Domestic research has included water quality studies in the New York City watershed. I served as Chair of the BEE department from 1994 to 2008. My teaching includes a highly interdisciplinary course on sustainable development.

Chris Watkins

356 Roberts Hall
cbw3@cornell.edu

Member of the following Graduate Fields:

• Food Science and Technology
• Horticulture

I am currently a professor in the Department of Horticulture, and Associate Director of Cornell Cooperative Extension. I conduct a postharvest science research and extension program with a major focus on pre and postharvest factors that affect quality of fruits and vegetables. My research includes the effects of storage technologies on the storage quality of products, including the nutritional quality of fruit, as well as the underlying mechanisms of fruit responses to storage conditions such as temperature, atmosphere, the inhibitor of ethylene perception, 1-methylcyclopropene (1-MCP), and the interaction of these factors with the development of storage disorders. My major crop of responsibility is the apple, but my students have also used strawberries, tomatoes, peaches and other products as appropriate.

I have been involved in overseas research and extension activities in Malawi, Zimbabwe and Serbia, as well as visits to China, Malaysia, India and Chile, and understand many of the challenges that exist for reducing food losses around the world. The IGERT program provides opportunity to link food systems associated with horticulture with other disciplines at Cornell.

Monroe Weber-Shirk

115 Hollister Hall
mw24@cornell.edu

Member of the following Graduate Fields:

• Environmental Engineering
• International Development

My research focus is low cost drinking water treatment technologies that perform well even in small, low-income communities. I direct the AguaClara team and we collaborate with partners in the global south to disseminate the AguaClara technologies and bring safe drinking water to cities and towns. We have conducted the proof of concept deployment of the AguaClara technologies in Honduras and are currently providing technical support to engineers in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Colombia, and Ecuador. Our ability to deploy multiple new technologies is the result of extensive research by the AguaClara team. These technologies include semi-automated dose controllers (chemical feeders) that operate without electricity, gravity powered chemical mixers, innovative fabrication methods that make it possible to use generic, readily available materials for almost all components, and a novel stacked rapid sand filter. The successful implementation of those technologies in Honduran towns is a direct result of our close collaboration with Agua Para el Pueblo and our emphasis on empowering local partners who in turn empower communities to build and manage their own water treatment facilities.

I have been teaching environmental engineering at Cornell University since 1994. I currently teach ENGRI 1131: Water Treatment Design, CEE 4540: Sustainable Municipal Drinking Water Treatment and the suite of AguaClara courses CEE 2550, CEE 4550, CEE 5051. I also take approximately 20 students per year on an education immersion experience in Central America with a focus on engineering in a global context

Chris Barrett

315 Warren Hall
cbb2@cornell.edu

Member of the following Graduate Fields:

• Applied Economics and Management
• Conservation & Sustainable Development
• Economics
• International Agriculture and Rural Development
• International Development
• Natural Resources

My research interests are broad ranging. But ultimately they boil down to an interest in using economic analysis to reduce unnecessary human suffering. Since most extreme poverty and food insecurity occurs in rural areas of the developing world, that’s where I work, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Because most of the world’s poor depend fundamentally on food systems to provide a livelihood and an adequate diet, my research group tackles a wide range of food system problems related to agricultural productivity, natural resources management in agroecosystems, food marketing systems, risk management, the institutions that govern resource use, production and exchange, and economic and agricultural policy. I am a fervent believer in the importance of field-based research and outreach, both to contextualize rigorous analysis and to ensure that scientific findings get back to practitioners who can act on those results to address the underlying causes of unnecessary poverty and food insecurity.

The Food Systems and Poverty Reduction IGERT offers an outstanding opportunity for exceptional, highly-motivated Ph.D. candidates to work together with a large group of us faculty at Cornell to help make progress on the complex problems that cause food systems to underperform their potential, to trap huge numbers of people in persistent poverty, and to degrade the natural environment. I am eager to work with students and faculty who share this passion and a commitment to apply the cutting-edge toolkits from our scientific disciplines to address these scientific and societal challenges.

Beth A. Medvecky, PhD

31 Warren Hall
bam44@cornell.edu

IGERT Associate Director, CIIFAD Assistant Director

Member of the following Graduate Fields:

• None

My academic training is in crop and soil science and pest management. My current research focuses on understanding interactions among soil fertility, crop management practices and soilborne pests and diseases in smallholder intensive mixed farming systems in Africa. My passion is using adaptive research and experiential learning approaches to help farmers gain the capacity to better manage their soil fertility and food security challenges. I have more than 17 years experience doing adaptive research and grassroots development work with NGOs in Kenya and consider myself more of a development practioner than an academic.

I am a Research Associate not a faculty member. This means that I will not be able to serve on anyone’s PhD committee, although all IGERT students will interact with me a lot.

Rebecca Nelson

303A Plant Science
rjn7@cornell.edu

Member of the following Graduate Fields:

• Plant Pathology & Plant-Microbe Biology
• Plant Breeding
• International Agriculture and Rural Development

My research interests have to do with helping people reduce their crop losses. My lab works on quantitative disease resistance in maize. We are trying to understand host-pathogen interactions at a practical level and at an academic level. How can we help breeders make better use of the fabulous genetic diversity in maize to produce more resilient varieties? How do plants defend themselves, and how can that understanding better inform our practical work? One of the fungal pathogens of interest to our group is Aspergillus flavus, which causes ear rots of maize. This pathogen also produces a toxic metabolite, aflatoxin, which is a public health problem in African food systems. My group participates in a multi-disciplinary effort to tackle this problem in Kenya.

There’s more to life than fungi, some might say. To engage with larger issues of food security, I also serve as Scientific Director for The McKnight Foundation’s Collaborative Crop Research Program. In this role, I work with diverse colleagues to support research projects in food-insecure regions in Africa and the Andes. I very much look forward to participating in the Food Systems and Poverty Reduction IGERT in a similar spirit.

Alice Pell

115 Day Hall
ap19@cornell.ed

Member of the following Graduate Fields:

• Animal Science
• International Agriculture and Rural Development
• Microbiology
• Nutrition
• Public Affairs

My research focuses on the roles of livestock in African and South Asian smallholder farming systems. I am especially interested in livestock nutrition and the roles of animals in nutrient cycling and maintenance of soil fertility. Inadequate nutrition and decreases in soil productivity currently constrain animal and crop production in African farming systems. Understanding how farmers manage their livestock in relation to other components of their systems is an important step towards improving livestock and soil productivity and reducing poverty and malnutrition.

I am currently serving as Vice Provost of International Relations. While this limits my capacity to serve as a primary faculty advisor to IGERT trainees, I will interact with the group frequently and can serve as a minor member of graduate committees. I am also happy to assist students whose interests overlap with mine to identify potential faculty advisors in the Graduate Fields I represent.

Per Pinstrup-Andersen

305 Savage Hall
pp94@cornell.edu

Member of the following Graduate Fields:

• Nutrition
• Applied Economics and Management
• Cornell Institute for Public Affairs

My research, teaching and graduate student advising focus on government policy for global and national food systems. I am particularly interested in the impact of trade policies and other aspects of globalization on poverty and nutrition and how policies and institutions can modify such impacts. I am also interested in the interaction between the food system and human health and nutrition and the role of science in promoting sustainable food security through agricultural development. I am coordinating a program to strengthen the effectiveness and relevance of university-level training in policies for the global and national food systems. As part of this program, 61 case studies have been developed and posted on the web for open access (http://cip.cornell.edu/gfs) and published in a three-volume book. These case studies are being used at Cornell and several other universities in Sub-Saharan Africa, South and East Asia and the United States. More case studies are being developed. Some of these case studies will be used in courses for the IGERT students along with a textbook on food system policies my co-author Derrill Watson and I plan to complete by mid-2010.

Alison Power

331 Corson Hall
agp4@cornell.edu

Member of the following Graduate Fields:

• Conservation & Sustainable Development
• Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
• Entomology
• International Agriculture and Rural Development
• Latin American Studies
• Science & Technology Studies

I study ecological processes in agricultural and natural ecosystems, with a particular focus on insect herbivores and pathogens. My research interests include biodiversity conservation in managed ecosystems, interactions between agricultural and natural ecosystems, agroecology, the ecology and evolution of plant pathogens, impacts of global change on disease dynamics, and ecosystem services from agriculture. Some of my current research explores how plant community structure in both natural and agricultural ecosystems influences the epidemiology of insect-borne pathogens of plants. I have examined how cropping system, plant species diversity, host genetic diversity, and plant density and dispersion affect disease spread. My students and I have addressed these issues in agricultural systems in the northeast U.S., Central America, the Caribbean, southeast Asia, and Africa. In recent years, I have used the aphid-transmitted barley yellow dwarf virus, a widespread pathogen of crops and grasses, as a model system to address other aspects of the interactions between viruses, insect vectors and host plants. Projects have addressed virus spread between crop hosts and wild host plants, the impacts of virus infection on wild grass hosts, and the ecological risks of transgenic virus resistance in crops. I have recently begun a project examining the impacts of climate change on pests and pathogens of maize in Africa. Overall, this work is intended to contribute to the design of productive, sutainable food systems.