NURTURE-SEA Team
NURTURE-SEA Team
We are a Community of Practice (CoP) working to ensure a sustainable and equitable urban future.
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Professor Festo Massawe
-Lead, NURTURE-SEA CoP
Festo is a crop scientist with expertise in crop diversity, sustainable and resilient food systems. He has extensive experience in developing and leading research, training and knowledge exchange activities with partners in Asia, Africa and Europe. His research is focused on promoting food systems diversification and healthy food environments, believing that these efforts will lead to a healthy, sustainable and resilient future for everyone.
Professor Alex Lechner
Alex focuses on the use of integrated socio-environmental methods, incorporating spatially explicit modelling, GIS and remote sensing. His current research interests lie in sustainable urban planning, natural resource management, extractive industries, and biodiversity conservation, with a primary focus on Southeast Asia.
Mr. Chin Kar Yern
Kar Yern’s expertise lies in political and historical perspectives on food security and labour in Southeast Asia. Some of his past projects include hawker streetside economy, labour in oil palm plantation, and plastic material culture. Kar Yern is also writing a book on a history of Malaysian food discourse, labour, and systems through the lens of hunger and development from 1957 to 1969.
Professor Chris Gibbins
Chris is a hydro-ecologist with expertise in freshwater ecology, sustainable catchment and water resources management and river restoration. His research is focused on understanding the links between physical habitat conditions and biota in freshwater ecosystems. Chris has experience in interdisciplinary approaches to solving major global challenges and collaborates extensively with partners from Europe, Africa, East and South-east Asia.
Dr Goh Ee Von
Ee Von is a public health nutritionist with a diverse professional background in commercial, research, and educational sectors. Her research focuses on the intersection of sustainability, nutrition, and public health, emphasizing people-centred and nutrition-sensitive initiatives. Ee Von has expertise in mixed-method research, policy analysis, and stakeholder engagement and she is skilled in system-thinking and science-policy interface.
Associate Professor Grace Wangge
Grace is a medical doctor, and an epidemiologist specializing in Public Health Policy. She has extensive experience in grassroots research, capacity building, and in evaluating health and nutrition programmes in primary health services. Her current research interests include public health system strengthening, digital health governance, pharmacovigilance, and health communication.
Associate Professor Orachos Napasintuwong
Orachos’s work focuses on sustainable agri-food system transformation in Southeast Asia. Her areas of expertise include economic analysis of technology adoption and diffusion, sustainable agriculture, consumer preferences and agri-food policy. She serves significant roles including as an executive member, country person and project lead for regional and international agriculture policy research and capacity building projects. She is also an Associate Editor of Asian Journal of Applied Economics and Agro Ekonoki.
Dr. Jesus Fernandez
Jesus specializes in advocacy work in the lifespan approach to food and nutrition intervention through strategic alliances with relevant institutions in Southeast Asia. His expertise lies in community development, capacity building, organizational communication and management, strategic planning and programme management, networking and collaboration, knowledge management, and in creating systems-based solutions.
Mrs Yasmin Norazharuddin
Yasmin provides administrative and technical support to the NURTURE-SEA community. She has expertise in community nutrition, nutrition and food advisory and project management. Her research interests are in food policy, consumer behaviour, social and economics domains in food consumption, and food system within urban environment.
Dr. Leila Africa
Leila is a registered Nutritionist specializing in community nutrition. She leads multiple projects on food composition, growth monitoring and promotion guidelines, validation of research instruments, multi-level analysis, impact evaluation, nutrition and food security research including programme management, monitoring and evaluation.
Mr. Tan Zhai Gen
Zhai Gen is currently a PhD student in Political Science at the University of California Santa Barbara. His research interest in climate and ethnic politics of the Global South, including in the energy transition in Southeast Asia. He has worked on food security, the socio-economic impact of technology and digital gig economy. His expertise lies within public policy research, which involves research publications and advocacy work for the Malaysian government.
Professor Nguyen Phuong Le
Phuong Le has 30 years research experience in agricultural policy, rural development, particularly in rural livelihood, gender, agrarian transformation, food production and consumption.
Professor Tapan Kumar Nath
Tapan is an interdisciplinary researcher in the field of Community-based Natural Resource Management (CBRM). His research and teaching span the social science disciplines of conservation social science, human geography, environmental geography, forestry, and environmental science. He applies socio-ecological approaches, frameworks for sustainable livelihoods, and frameworks for natural resource governance for CBFM and the livelihoods of communities in the Global South that depend on forests.
Dr. Le Thi Thanh Loan
Loan leads a specialized research group in agricultural policy. She is skilled in quantitative and qualitative research approaches including research instruments such as survey and interview protocols, customizing them to suit the unique socio-economic and cultural landscapes of Vietnam and Southeast Asian nations.
Miss Olivia Herlinda
Olivia has 10 years of experience in public health action research, policy and data analysis, project monitoring and evaluation. Trained in public health, she works on various issues of public health and health policy with specific interest area in food policy and health system strengthening.
Professor Poh Bee Koon
Bee Koon is a nutritionist with extensive research experience that involves multi-disciplinary and multi-country projects. Her main research area is childhood and adolescent nutrition focussing on energy metabolism, physical activity and body composition. She has expertise in mixed-method research approaches covering surveys, observation and intervention studies. Bee Koon has led many international projects, including SEAOFE and SEANUTS.
Assistant Professor Karl Abelard L. Villegas
Karl specializes in nature-based solutions, ecosystem restoration, biodiversity conservation and sustainable forest management. He has made significant contributions to education and research in environment and natural resource management and collaborated with the national government and international organizations on various development projects in the Philippines such as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity and others.
Dr. Maria Zita Toribio
Maria is experienced in integrated environment and natural resources management and governance, with focus on protected area and critical habitat management planning, environmental and social impact assessment, policy development, capacity development, monitoring and evaluation tools development and climate change vulnerability assessment.
Dr. Nguyen Nam Giang
Nam Giang specializes in Agricultural Production Systems, Public Policy, Food Systems, and Social Development. He has spent his career in research as a scientific secretary in several projects and scientific management at the Vietnam Academy of Agricultural Sciences (VAAS).
Dr. Menaka Ganeson
Menaka focuses on identifying and exploring innovative ideas, approaches, and research opportunities aiming to inform planetary health research agenda. Her current work is adopting Doughnut Economics model in Ipoh city’s planning and decision- making processes, in partnership with Majlis Bandaraya Ipoh (MBI) and Institute Darul Ridzuan (IDR).
Associate Professor Sirinya Phulkerd
Sirinya has expertise in food environment and policy analysis relevant to food security. Much of her work has been on improving the understanding, design, and performance of food policies and systems in Thailand. She is a lead coordinator of policy analysis module of SEAOFE. She brings extensive Food Policy and Monitoring and Evaluation experience.
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