People

Dr. Rebecca Nelson
Rebecca Nelson is a professor at Cornell University’s School of Integrative Plant Science. She serves as scientific director for The McKnight Foundation’s Collaborative Crop Research Program. Rebecca serves as co-chair of the Thematic Group on Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems for the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), a global initiative at the United Nations. She also…

Dr. Chandra S. Nuthalapati
Chandra S. Nuthalapati is a professor of economics at the Institute of Economic Growth in New Delhi, India. His research interests include food value chains, the economics of technological change, natural resource management, and the social sector. He believes in the game-changing nature of technologies for optimizing social welfare, especially for smallholders and poor consumers….

Amrutha Jose Pampackal
Amrutha Jose Pampackal is a PhD candidate in the field of development sociology. She is interested in studying the sociology of access to food, particularly among marginalized communities in India. Prior to joining Cornell, Amrutha worked with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in their Poverty, Health and Nutrition Division. The work she did…

Dr. Prabhu Pingali
Dr. Prabhu Pingali is the founding director of TCI and a professor in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, with an appointment in the Department of Global Development in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University. Before moving to Ithaca in June 2013, he was the deputy director…

Dr. Milorad Plavsic
Dr. Milorad (Misha) Plavsic is TCI’s manager for strategic initiatives. While most of TCI’s activities are focused on India, Misha’s main role is to lead the Institute’s expansion to other countries. Before joining TCI, Misha worked as a food system challenge manager at the Global Challenges Research Fund at UK Research and Innovation. His work…

Dr. Raghav Puri
Raghav is a research associate at the Tata-Cornell Institute. His research broadly examines the implementation and impact of health and nutrition policies in India. Raghav received his PhD in public administration from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. His dissertation examines the effectiveness of demand-side health policies (conditional cash transfers…

Dr. Andaleeb Rahman
Andaleeb Rahman is a research associate at TCI. He is an economist by training. His research interests are economic and human development. Much of his work explores aspects of agriculture, food, and nutritional security in India. At TCI, Andaleeb is pursuing research around safety net programs, nutrition, agricultural transformation, and the salience of social identity…

Dr. Pallavi Rajkhowa
Dr. Pallavi Rajkhowa is an associate research fellow at TCI’s Center of Excellence in New Delhi, where she supports the Center’s research activities, with a focus on projects associated with the Farmer Producer Organization Hub. She previously worked as a senior researcher at the Center for Development Research at the University of Bonn in Germany,…

Kasim Saiyyad
Kasim is a PhD candidate in the field of applied economics and management. His broad research interests are in agriculture and nutrition economics, with a special focus on public welfare programs in low- and middle-income countries. He earned his MS in applied economics and management from Cornell University in 2021. His MS thesis was based…

Sumedha Shukla
Sumedha is a senior associate researcher at TCI, where she contributes to the Zero-Hunger, Zero-Carbon Food Systems project. She is also pursuing a PhD in economics at the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology Delhi. Her doctoral research focuses on addressing causal questions related to crop yield management under resource constraints. Broadly, her research interests encompass…