Research/Policy Brief Editorial Committee (2022-2024)
Ramjee Ghimire, PhD
Outreach Specialist and Director for International Short Courses in “Food Safety” and “Zoonotic Diseases”, Michigan State University, Michigan, USA
Email: ramghi at gmail dot com
Dr. Ramjee Ghimire is multidisciplinary researcher cum development specialist on education and sustainable development, including agricultural development. He earned a Ph.D. in Community, Agriculture, Recreation and Resource Studies from Michigan State University, Michigan, USA in 2016. He provides oversight to international short courses in food safety and zoonotic diseases. Collaborating with research and extension officials and university faculty, Dr. Ghimire has led many research and outreach initiatives for demand-driven, participatory, and pluralistic extension services and facilitated training programs for extension professionals and agricultural entrepreneurs in Asia, Africa, and USA. Prior to joining MSU, Dr. Ghimire served for over 16 years at the Department of Livestock Services in Nepal providing technical and administrative oversight to district livestock extension programs and departmental monitoring and evaluation. He also had the privilege of coordinating with several stakeholders including ministries to develop national rangeland policy for Nepal. He led several collaborative projects on animal disease prevention and control and community development with national and international NGOs including FAO, USAID, Winrock International, among others. He served as the Editor-in-Chief of the Policy and Research Brief Editorial Committee and contributed to several other NAPA Committees (e.g., Resource Capacity Building Committee). Dr. Ghimire has been serving as a reviewer for over half a dozen journals and he is widely published.
Lila Khatiwada, PhD
Dr. Khatiwada is an expert on evaluation research and has implemented research work in many contexts such as Colombia, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, Nepal, and Uganda. Further, using participatory approaches, Dr. Khatiwada designed and implemented gender analyses for agriculture, forestry, microfinance, and enterprise development projects in Nepal for ten years. He possesses expertise in experimental and quasi-experimental research design. In Ghana, he used a quasi-experimental design to evaluate the impact of a major Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC)-funded WASH project (2013-2017). More recently, for a Department of Labor evaluation in Nepal, Dr. Khatiwada used a randomized phased-in design to evaluate UNICEF Nepal’s child labor program (2015-2019). In Uganda, he led a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) to evaluate impact of improved cook stoves (2014-2017). In Ethiopia, he evaluated the impact of satellite pasture maps in reducing cattle mortality for a USAID-funded project in the Afar region (2016-2017). This evaluation used difference-in-difference to estimate impact. In 2019, he led a performance evaluation of a USAID/Feed the Future-funded resilience project in Oromia, Ethiopia, while in Malawi, he helped evaluate the long-term impact of the USAID-funded WALA Activity around household and community level resilience (2018-2019). This evaluation used a matching method to conduct its impact evaluation. Dr. Khatiwada is proficient in using qualitative software, such as ATLAS.ti, and quantitative software like SPSS and STATA. He holds a Ph.D. in Rural Sociology and a Graduate Certificate in Geographic Information System (GIS) from the University of Missouri and an MS in Rural Sociology and Environment Science from the University of the Philippines. In 2020, he completed a course on Evaluating Social Programs offered by MIT. He has published his research works in American Behavioral Scientists, Journal of Regional Analysis and Planning, Maternal and Child Health, Journal of International Tourism Research, Africa Today, Eurasian Geography and Economics, and World Development Perspectives journals and has reviewed for the World Development, Journal of International Tourism Research, Experimental Agriculture, and Community Informatics.
Pramod Pantha, PhD
Postdoctoral Research Scientist, Louisiana State University, LA, USA Email: pramodpantha at gmail dot com
Dr. Pramod Pantha is currently working as a Postdoctoral Research Scientist at the Department of Biological Sciences, Louisiana State University, LA. Dr. Pantha received his bachelor’s degree from the Institute of Agriculture and Animal Sciences in 2012 majoring in Plant Breeding and Genetics. He has experience working as a Program Coordinator in CTEVT Nepal for one year before he joined the University of Arkansas for an MS in Biotechnology and Genomics. Dr. Pantha received his Ph.D. from Louisiana State University in Biology where he performed multi-omics data analysis and integration to identify the key genes and regulatory networks that might confer salt tolerance. Currently, Dr. Pantha is working on genome assembly, annotation, and scaffolding of multiple plant species and using comparative genomics and transcriptomics tools to identify the genetic signature for the plant adaptation to multiple stresses. Dr. Pantha is a life member of NAPA.
Thaneshwar Bhandari
Assistant Professor, Institute of Agriculture and Animal Science, Tribhuvan University
Mr. Thaneshwar Bhandari was born and raised in Gulmi Nepal. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Agriculture Economics from the Institute of Agriculture and Animal Science at Tribhuvan University, in 1999 and Master’s in Rural Development in 2005, also from Tribhuvan University. In 2010, Mr. Bhandari received his second Master’s degree in International MSc in Rural Development with a specialization in Agriculture Economics. Funded through the Erasmus Mundus Scholarship, this course was jointly hosted by Humboldt University Germany, Ghent University Belgium and Slovak Agriculture University. Currently, he is pursuing his doctorate degree at Tribhuvan University. His doctorate thesis is on fishery industry value chain analysis in Indo Nepal region. Mr. Bhandari is an accomplished professional who has been serving as an academician, researcher and development expert in agriculture and rural development for over two decades. Since 2012, he has been teaching Agriculture Economics to undergraduate and graduate students. He has supervised theses for over 30 students pursuing agriculture economics graduate degrees. Mr. Bhandari is widely published. He has published 20 articles as a sole and co-author in refereed journals, authored five books and over 30 news articles in many different areas, including but not limited to, food policies, agricultural value chains, farm efficiencies, food market development, climate-smart agriculture, agricultural insurance and farm credit, socio-economic impact analysis, vulnerability mapping, livelihoods and ecosystem service. Furthermore, he serves as the reviewer for several refereed national and international journals and provides consultancy services in development projects.Prior to joining Tribhuvan University as a teaching faculty, he served in donor-funded development projects such as Project for Agriculture Commercialization and Trade, German Technical Cooperation, and DEPROSC Nepal for over a decade. Mr. Bhandari has been an Associated Life Member of NAPA since October 2019. He has been actively participating in NAPA activities. To know more about him, please visit: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7474-2803, and https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=e8LfYO0AAAAJ&hl=en