Jef Leroy is a Senior Research Fellow in IFPRI’s Nutrition, Diets, and Health Unit. He studies the impact of nutrition-sensitive agriculture and social protection programs on maternal and child nutrition. His evaluation studies use experimental designs combined with process evaluations and costing studies. Jef currently works on the evaluation of a social protection program in Bangladesh designed to improve birth outcomes and on the evaluation of a training and certification program aimed at improving the quality of milk sold by informal vendors in Nairobi. In addition, he studies the role of food environments in adolescent nutrition in urban areas in Ghana, Viet Nam, and Ethiopia. He also conducts research on the use of child linear growth in development. Jef recently completed the evaluation of two large-scale food-assisted maternal and child health and nutrition programs in Burundi and Guatemala. He has also conducted research on the impact of aflatoxin on child linear growth in Kenya and Mexico.

Before joining IFPRI, Jef was a research associate at the Center for Evaluation Research and Surveys at Mexico’s National Institute of Public Health, where he worked on the evaluation of the urban and rural Oportunidades programs and of the Programa de Apoyo Alimentario (a cash and in-kind transfer program).

Jef Leroy, a Belgian citizen, has a PhD in International Nutrition from Cornell University, USA, and an MSc in Agricultural and Applied Biological Sciences from Ghent University, Belgium.

Languages spoken: Dutch, English, French, Spanish, Afrikaans