Akhter Ahmed is a senior research fellow in the Poverty, Health, and Nutrition Division. He joined IFPRI in 1990. He works on strategies for agricultural and rural development, social protection, and women’s empowerment to reduce poverty, food insecurity, and undernutrition of the poor in developing countries. Ahmed was posted in Bangladesh from 1990 to 1994, where he worked on targeted interventions and participated in designing the innovative food for education program. From 1996 to 1999 he was posted in Egypt as the leader of IFPRI's collaborative project on food security research. During 2000-2009, he worked on poverty and human development issues in Bangladesh, China, India, Malawi, the Philippines, and Turkey. Since 2010, Ahmed has been posted in Bangladesh where he is leading the Policy Research and Strategy Support Program for Food Security and Agricultural Development in Bangladesh. Before coming to IFPRI, Ahmed worked with the World Bank and was an agricultural economist for the U.S. Agency for International Development. He received a PhD in agricultural economics from Colorado State University, and an M.S. in agricultural economics from Cornell University.