Our Team

Dr Alka Rao

Advisor (Science & Standards & Regulations), National Codex Contact Point, National Focal Point FAO GM Food Platform, Enquiry point for WTO-SPS at Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) (On Deputation), Senior Principal Scientist, CSIR- Institute of Microbial Technology, Chandigarh and Adjunct Professor, Academy of Scientific & Innovative Research (AcSIR), Ghaziabad

Dr. Rao is a protein engineer and molecular microbiologist with over 15 years of research experience. She is recognized for her discoveries of rare bacterial enzymes and for successfully launching a microbial agricultural product. Dr. Rao has led 22 plus R&D projects, filed over 15 patents (seven granted) & copyrights, and published 70+ international papers. With over 15 awards and fellowships to her name, she was recognized as one of the "Women Scientist Achievers" in CSIR laboratories in 2023.

Currently, Dr. Rao heads the Science & Standards & Regulations divisions at FSSAI and works with over 280 experts for developing standards, guidance documents, codes of practice and regulations for enhancing food safety in the country. She also serves as the Nodal officer with Codex Alimentarius Commission and Enquiry Point for WTO-SPS Committee

Dr. SubbaRao M GavaraVarapu

Principal Investigator

Dr. SubbaRao is head of the division of Nutrition Information Communication & Health Education (NICHE) and Scientist G at the ICMR-National Institute of Nutrition, India, is a communication expert with a focus on nutrition and food safety. His research explores the contextual factors shaping food environments; food labelling; front-of-pack-labels;social media and food behaviours; and infodemiology. His expertise shines a light on the ever-evolving complexities of making informed food choices by adolescents. Currently he is spearheading the e-dialogue series in the LFOF consortium which looks into shaping healthier food environments for adolescents.

Ms. Ishani Ghotikar

Project Manager

Ms Ishani Ghotikar is a Nutritionist with experience in public health nutrition and maternal and child health. She is a certified Sports Nutritionist from the Sports Authority of India - National Institute of Sports. Her experience in Content Writing combined with her interest in Nutrition Education enables her to manage the outreach of the Let’s Fix Our Foods project using social media and content development.

She believes in empowering youth with the right nutrition information to enable them to make the right choices for a healthy future.

Ms Tavleen Kaur

Project Coordinator

Ms Tavleen Kaur is a nutrition and public health professional with academic and research experience in food, nutrition, and food-related behaviour. She holds a Master’s degree in Applied Nutrition from ICMR-NIN, and her work has focused on food environments, dietary practices, and the role of nutrition awareness in shaping everyday choices. As Project Coordinator for the Let’s Fix Our Food project, she supports programme coordination and research related to food and nutrition literacy. She is passionate about making nutrition communication simple, practical and relatable for wider audiences.

Dr. Sanjay Pandey

Lead Consultant NCD and Economic Advisor
Global Health Advocacy Incubator, India

Dr Pandey has over 20 years of experience and has Doctorate in Economics from IIT- Kanpur. He has been working in the areas of disability, health, education, natural resource management and livelihood security, reproductive child health, nutrition, HIV/AIDS and urban health. He started his career with the Society for Promotion of Wasteland Development (SPWD), and subsequently worked with Action - Aid, CARE, Jharkhand Health Society, the Institute of International Education, UNICEF, Population Foundation of India and Population Services International.

Dr Pandey’s experience includes providing strategic vision, leadership, technical expertise, management oversight, project planning, and implementation, development of new programs, state and national level advocacy, donor relationship management and providing managerial support to governments and civil society organizations.

Dr Shariqua Yunus Khan

Snr Programme Policy Officer and Head of Unit: Nutrition and School Feeding

Dr Shariqua Yunus has over 20 years of experience in public health nutrition. She is medical doctor with a specialization in Community Medicine She started her career with the Ministry of Health and Family, Government of India and then as the Nutrition focal point at World Health Organization- India. She currently works as a Senior Programme Policy Officer and Head of Unit- Nutrition & School feeding at the World Food Programme India office Her expertise lies in enhancing the nutritional effectiveness of the social protection programmes through a pilot to scale strategy including evidence generation, on-ground implementation and advocacy. In this role, she works at both National and State level, is a part of several Expert groups and committees and has also supported several countries in the region. She has to her credit several research papers in various national and international journals

Dr. Manika Sharma

Senior Technical Advisor - Nutrition
Resolve to Save Lives, India

Dr. Manika Sharma is the Senior Technical Advisor for Nutrition at Resolve to Save Lives (RTSL), India, where she leads initiatives on salt reduction, food policy, and the promotion of healthier diets to prevent diet-related non-communicable diseases. With over 15 years of experience in public health and nutrition, she specializes in advancing evidence-informed health and nutrition policies and scaling data-driven programs across India and South Asia.

Dr. Sharma’s expertise includes diet quality and diversity; micronutrient supplementation; nutrition program and economic evaluation; food policy; and agriculture–nutrition linkages. She works with national and state governments and multi-sectoral partners to translate research and evidence into sustainable policy and programs. She is a Fellow of WomenLift Health (2025 India Cohort), has co-authored several peer-reviewed publications, and holds a Master’s in Health Administration from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences.

Prof. Monika Arora

Vice President (Research and Health Promotion)
Public Health Foundation of India

Prof. Monika Arora is a global public health leader with over two decades of experience advancing integrated prevention, care, and management of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), with a strong emphasis on primary and primordial prevention across the life course. Through a multidisciplinary research team at the Health Promotion Division, PHFI, she has led large, multi-site research and implementation programmes across India, South-East Asia, and global platforms, working closely with governments, multilateral agencies, and civil society. Prof. Arora has pioneered community- and patient-centred care models for long-term management of Cardio-Metabolic Diseases and Obesity Prevention and Management. Her research outcomes have successfully informed national and regional NCD programmes and policies, demonstrating systems integration and pathways for effective scale-up in low- and middle-income settings.

She has served on several National, Regional, and International expert committees, including the WHO Commission on Ending Childhood Obesity, revising the National Multi-sectoral Action Plan (NMAP-II) in Bhutan, and Evidence-based policy development for Timor-Leste, and is the Past President of the Global NCD Alliance

Dr Tina Rawal

Senior Research Scientist
Public Health Foundation of India

Dr Tina Rawal is a nutritionist by training with extensive experience conducting research in India on lifestyle-related non-communicable diseases (NCDs).

Dr Rawal has over 15 years of research experience in the area of preventing and managing NCDs and associated risk factors. The large majority of her research portfolio is focused on strengthening the food environment and adolescent health. She has been actively contributing to designing, implementing, and evaluating interventions. During this time, she has also been actively involved in initiatives at the regional, national, and international levels, engaging adolescents meaningfully in health promotion programming. For example, she served as a member of the National Technical Working Group on developing the School Health Curriculum under Ayushman Bharat, formed by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India. She has led a study to examine the status, distribution, education capacity, and future requirements of India’s healthcare professional workforce under the aegis of NITI Aayog.

She obtained her PhD from Maastricht University. Her Ph.D. dissertation focused on evaluating the effectiveness of a comprehensive intervention in improving dietary and physical activity patterns among adolescents. She has published widely on the prevention and control of NCDs and associated risk factors.

Dr William Joe

Associate Professor, Population Research Centre
Institute of Economic Growth, New Delhi

Dr. Joe has a PhD in Economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University. Currently, he is engaged in monitoring and evaluation work for the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW, Government of India) with specific focus on National Health Mission. He is also member of the Technical Advisory Groups on Nutrition for the NITI Aayog, Government of Karnataka and Government of Jharkhand. Dr. Joe also leads the UNICEF-IEG collaboration on Anemia Mukt Bharat technical support activities for MoHFW.

Kathryn Backholer

Professor of Public Health Policy and Co-Director of the Institute for Health Transformation (IHT) Deakin University, Australia

Kathryn Backholer is Professor of Public Health Policy and Co-Director of the Institute for Health Transformation (IHT) at Deakin University. Within IHT, she previously co-led the Global Centre for Preventive Health and Nutrition (GLOBE), which includes a World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Obesity Prevention. She holds a National Heart Foundation Future Leader Fellowship and serves as Vice President (Policy) of the Public Health Association of Australia.

Kathryn leads a multidisciplinary program of research focused on strengthening policy and practice to improve health and wellbeing through prevention. Her work examines how economic, regulatory and digital environments shape exposure to risk factors for non-communicable diseases, with a strong focus on equity. She led the development of an AI-enabled monitoring system that captures real-world exposure to digital marketing for alcohol, gambling, vaping products and unhealthy foods, generating independent evidence to inform effective regulatory responses.

Kathryn regularly advises United Nations agencies, including WHO and UNICEF, and collaborates with governments across the East Asia and Pacific and South Asia regions. She maintains ongoing partnerships with UNICEF regional offices to support evidence-informed action to improve the nutritional health of children and adolescents.

Dr Neena Bhatia

Professor, Food and Nutrition and Food Technology
Lady Irwin College, New Delhi

Dr Bhatia completed her M.Sc and PhD in Food and Nutrition from University of Delhi. She was a former Senior Specialist (Joint Advisor), WCD vertical, NITI Aayog. Dr Neena has an experience of over 29 years in research allied with public health nutrition, micronutrient profile of vulnerable groups, diet counselling, implementation and evaluation of public health and nutrition programmes.

Preetu B. Mishra

Nutrition Specialist
UNICEF India Country Office

Ms. Preetu Mishra works with UNICEF India Country Office as a Nutrition Specialist. She is currently leading the Anemia, Adolescent and Maternal Nutrition and Nutrition in School Age Children within UNICEF India Country office. She is working with UNICEF for more than 14 years and has worked previously with Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and in Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, and Gujarat and providing technical support to Government in managing Nutrition programs across life cycle. She is also the focal point within UNICEF for Let’s Fix Our Food.

She holds two Master’s degrees, in Public Health Nutrition and Health Administration. She is involved in the field of nutrition providing technical, programmatic, program planning, budget planning, nutrition financing, forging partnerships, capacity building, knowledge management. She has co-authored 2 national guidelines – Anemia Mukt Bharat; National Deworming Day and has published in The Lancet Regional Health – Southeast, BMC nutrition, BMJ, EPW, Indian Pediatrics, etc.

Marie-Claude Desilets

Chief of Nutrition, UNICEF India

Marie-Claude Desilets serves as the Chief of Nutrition for UNICEF India, where she leads nationwide efforts to improve child and maternal nutrition. She oversees UNICEF’s strategic support to the Government of India in achieving its nutrition goals. She emphasizes the importance of collaboration among government, civil society, and the private sector to strengthen policy frameworks, enhance advocacy efforts, improve service quality, and drive sustainable behavioural change—ensuring lasting impacts on nutrition outcomes for vulnerable populations. She holds a doctorate in Nutrition and Dietetics, along with specialized skills in program management and public health nutrition.

Dr Purnima Menon

Senior Director for Food and Nutrition Policy International Food Policy Research Institute, India

Dr. Purnima Menon is Senior Director for Food and Nutrition Policy. She also serves as Acting Director for Transformation Strategies. In this dual role, Dr. Menon works closely with IFPRI’s Director General and IFPRI’s research unit directors to manage IFPRI’s global research strategy. Dr. Menon has extensive research experience in evaluating large-scale programs in nutrition, health systems, agriculture, gender, technology, and food systems for better nutrition. She holds a PhD in International Nutrition from Cornell University and an MS in Nutrition from the University of Delhi. she has played a pivotal role in agenda-setting academic collaborations, including the Lancet Series on Nutrition, Countdown to 2030, the Global Nutrition Report, and more.