Contributors xxiii Irish P. Baguilat (International Institute of Rural Reconstruction (IIRR)) is cur- rently the Applied Learning Program Manager at IIRR. As a former Food and Nutrition Program Manager, she led the implementation of several research pro- jects. She co-managed the ‘Integrated Approach to Address Food and N utrition Security in the Philippines’ project that developed a school nutrition model. She also served as the project manager for the ‘Improving Food and Nutrition Security in the Philippines Using Schools as Platforms’ project that scaled up an integrated school nutrition.
Irish received her BSc in Agriculture from the University of the Philippines and is currently pursuing her master’s in Community Development. Malek Batal (World Health Organization (WHO); Collaborating Centre on Nutrition Changes and Development (TRANSNUT); https://orcid.org/0000- 0001-5672-0371) is professor of Public Health Nutrition at the Nutrition Department of the Universitй de Montrйal’s Faculty of Medicine and Director of TRANSNUT. His research focusses on the nutrition transition; the double burden of malnutrition; food security; and the environmental, social, economic, and cultural determinants of food choices, and their relationship to the health of individuals and the ecosystem.
He works with many populations, including Indigenous peoples in Canada and South America, and rural populations in the Middle East, South America, and the Caribbean. Daniela Moura De Oliveira Beltrame (Biodiversity for Food and Nutrition (BFN) project, Brazil) holds an MSc and a PhD in nutrition (food science) from the University of Sгo Paulo.
As the national coordinator of the Biodiversity for Food and Nutrition (BFN) project in Brazil, Daniela led the implementation of activities in the country and collaborated with universities and national research agencies to carry out work such as determining the nutrition composition of and developing an online database with 70 underutilized fruit species native to Brazil as well as liaising with partner ministries for the inclusion of food biodiversity in public policies and programmes, such as nutrition education, food procurement, and school feeding.
Dhruba Raj Bhattarai (Nepal Agricultural Research Council) is Chief and S enior Scientist at the Outreach Research Division of the Nepal Agricultural Research Council. He has more than 15 years of experience in the field of food security and vegetable science, with a particular interest in research projects that pro- mote integrated approaches for improving nutrition in Nepal. He has published 5 books and over 100 papers. He holds a BSc in Agriculture from Chaudhary Charan Singh University (CCS) India; an MSc in horticulture from Institute of Agriculture and Animal Sciences, Tribhuvan University; and a PhD in vegetable science from Dr. Y. S.
Parmar University of Horticulture & Forestry, India. Samuel Bikajle (Republic of the Marshall Islands Public School System) is the Learning Garden Program Coordinator for the Republic of the Marshall Islands