International Day of Women and Girls in Science: Interview with Purnima Menon

Purnima Menon is CGIAR Senior Director for Food and Nutrition Policy and an IFPRI Senior Research Fellow based in New Delhi. She is the theme leader for South Asia Nutrition Programs in IFPRI’s Poverty, Health, and Nutrition Division. In her work in India, Dr. Menon directs POSHAN (Partnerships and Opportunities to Strengthen and Harmonize Actions for Nutrition in India), an initiative to support more use of evidence for nutrition in India. She conducts implementation research on scaling up maternal and child nutrition interventions, including on evaluating large-scale behavior change communications programs in nutrition and health. Dr. Menon has research experience in India, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Haiti, Viet Nam and Nepal, has published extensively, and invests deeply in research translation in her engagements with policy communities. 

To mark the International Day of Women and Girls in Science (February 11)—which this year focuses on sustainability—we asked Dr. Menon about her development as a scientist, her work, and her perspectives on women and girls in STEM.