As director of HarvestPlus, Dr. Howarth Bouis coordinates an interdisciplinary, global effort to breed and disseminate micronutrient-rich staple food crops to reduce hidden hunger among malnourished populations. Since 1993, he has sought to promote biofortification both within the CGIAR, among national agricultural research centers, and in the international agriculture and nutrition communities.

Bouis holds a joint appointment at the International Food Policy Research Institute (Washington, D.C.) where he is based and the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) (Cali, Colombia). He received his B.A. in Economics from Stanford University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Stanford University's Food Research Institute. He joined IFPRI in 1982 as a post-doctoral fellow in the Food Consumption and Nutrition Division (FCND) and later as Research Fellow and Senior Research Fellow in FCND. His research concentrated on understanding how economic factors affect food demand and nutrition outcomes, particularly in Asia. Before entering graduate school, he spent three years in the Philippines with Volunteers in Asia.