NCEARD

With 25 years of experience in teaching and research, Dr. Manisha Sabharwal is currently the Head, Department of Food and Nutrition, Lady Irwin College. She also serves as Lead, NCEARD. Her doctoral research focused on ‘Nutritional Epidemiology of Free living Elderly residing in Delhi'. She has also worked on nutritional assessment of institutionalized elderly and related variables. She has guided over 30 M.Sc. Dissertations and four Doctoral thesis in the Department of Food and Nutrition. She has contributed several research papers, chapters in text books and popular articles on geriatric nutrition, obesity related comorbidities among elderly and determinants of functional ability and dependence among elderly. She has worked as a Senior Research fellow for research project on, ‘Nutritional status of elderly living at home in Delhi' sponsored by Indian Council of Medical Research .She has been the research coordinator for a project on 'Development of resource material for nutrition programmes of elderly ‘sponsored by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Government of India. Her current research interests focus on Maternal and Child Nutrition, Nutrition communication for the vulnerable groups and awareness creation and capacity building of elderly for promotion of healthy lifestyle and management of chronic degenerative diseases.

Mansi Chopra joined the National Centre of Excellence and Advanced Research on Diets (NCEAR-D), Lady Irwin College in March 2018. Being a part of the centre, she provides technical and administrative support to the center. She leads the component on development of maternal malnutrition guidelines for facility and community level. She holds a Masters’ degree in Food and Nutrition from Lady Irwin College, University of Delhi and a doctorate in Food and Nutrition in association with Department of Food and Nutrition, Lady Irwin College and All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi. Her research interests include development of low-cost lifestyle interventions for management of non-communicable diseases, overweight and obesity and maternal nutrition. Prior to joining the NCEAR-D, she has worked with All India Institute of Medical Sciences and Department of Food and Nutrition, Lady Irwin College for more than 7 years.

Dr Nighat Sofi joined the National Centre of Excellence and Advanced Research on Diets (NCEAR-D), Lady Irwin College in December 2018. Being a part of the centre, she provides technical support to Nutrition communication and works for Maternal Nutrition guidelines at facility level. She holds a Masters’ degree in Dietetics and Food Service Management and Doctorate in Food and Nutrition from Faculty of Home Science, Banasthali Vidyapith in association with All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi. She holds the award of Senior Research Fellow from University Grants Commission of India and one-year diploma in computer applications. Her research interests include study on nutritional risk factors and management of non-communicable diseases, development of research proposals, scientific paper writing and external reviewer for national and international journals. Prior to joining NCEAR-D, she was working with All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi for more than three years.

Pallavi Gupta is a Consultant at National Centre of Excellence and Advanced Research on Diets (NCEAR-D), Lady Irwin College. She has more than 3 years of work experience with sound knowledge of designing and adapting data collection tools, mechanisms for monitoring and evaluation and quantitative data analysis. Her pedagogical interests include nutrition and maternal health, reproductive health, early childhood education and child development. She holds a Masters’ degree in Statistics from Panjab University, Chandigarh and MPhil and PhD in Population Studies from International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai. She is an out of the box thinker, a firm believer in dynamic approach with the ability to apply my knowledge and experience to various settings and causes.

Somila Surabhi is a consultant at National Centre of Excellence and Advanced Research on Diets (NCEAR-D), Lady Irwin College. She holds a PhD degree in Foods and Nutrition from the Department of Foods & Nutrition, Faculty of Family and Community Sciences, The M.S. University of Baroda, Vadodara. She is a public health professional with more than five years of progressive hands-on experience of monitoring, evaluating and providing supportive supervision to various Government flagship programmes. Her area of interest includes working towards improving nutrition in the community through lifecycle approach. She believes in working consistently towards the development of community through various effective approaches.

Abdul Jaleel is a consultant at National Centre of Excellence and Advanced Research on Diets (NCEARD), Lady Irwin College. He received his PhD in Population Studies from the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), Mumbai in 2017. His research interests include gender, nutrition and livelihood. Parts of Jaleel’s PhD dissertation on Non-Communicable Diseases and Quality of Life of Women Seasonal Migrants have been published in leading academic journals. He was a Senior Research Fellow of University Grants Commission (UGC), India. He has more than 3 years of work experience in designing research, developing tools of data collection, and quantitative data analysis.

Naman Kaur received her M.Sc degree in Food and Nutrition from Amity University, Noida and is currently working as a Junior Professional at the National Centre of Excellence in Advanced Research on Diets, New Delhi (supported by UNICEF and placed at Lady Irwin College). Her professional interests focus on women’s and children’s nutrition, new food product development and her current project includes providing assistance in field testing of maternal nutrition package developed for ANC/PMSMA platforms, developing counselling material for pregnant women, developing standardized recipes for obesity, under nutrition and anaemic pregnant women. She also provides support in data entry and analysis and coordinates other activities of the centre as delegated by the Lead, NCEARD. Prior to joining NCEARD, she worked as a trainee at Defence Institute of Physiology and Allied Sciences (nutrition division), DRDO on the topic Effect of Partial Baking and Incorporation of Oat Bran on Nutritive Value of Frozen Chapatti and Phytochemical Analysis of Quinoa.

Tashi Choedon joined the National Centre for Excellence and Advanced Research on diets (NCEARD), Lady Irwin College, Delhi University on October 2018. She has joined as a junior nutrition consultant and has supported in the development and pretesting of technical and operational guidelines, training modules and recipe books that have been used as the counselling materials. She previously was Maternal Nutrition consultant with National Nutrition Rehabilitation Resource & Training Centre (NNRTC) designated for Infant and young child feeding (IYCF) counselling centre for over 1 year. There her work focused on the evidence generation, the development and testing effectiveness of maternal nutrition package, and development of recipes for over-nourished and undernourished women. She holds a Master degree in Food and Nutrition from Delhi University.

Priyanshu Rastogi joined the National Centre of Excellence and Advanced Research on Diets (NCEARD), Lady Irwin College, Delhi University in April 2019 as a Junior Professional. She holds her M.Sc. degree in Public Health Nutrition from the Department of Foods & Nutrition, Faculty of Family and Community Sciences, The M.S. University of Baroda, Vadodara. She previously worked as a Project Consultant- Nutrition with Ernst and Young, Noida for over 5 months. Her previous work includes evaluation of the strategies and assessment of the knowledge, attitude and practices of the community. She has experience in qualitative and quantitative tools development for nutrition education, capacity building of the enumerators, providing nutrition counselling at facility and community level, and interviewing districts as well as block officials and IEC development. She also worked as an intern at National Health Mission (NHM) supported by UNICEF on providing technical support on IYCF practices.

Usman Siddiqui is the most recent addition to the NCEARD team. He has done his PGD in Development Communication and Masters in Mass Communication from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. He has more than three years of experience of working with non-profit organizations as Communications Professional. In his previous roles, he was involved in promotion and branding through print media, audio-visuals, social media and events. He has made three documentaries and also served as a Faculty at Film making Institutes. He has also done several Photography and Videography projects as a freelancer. At NCEARD, his role includes handling of social media, content development, technical writing, liasoning with website agency, liasoning with production house for development of films and other communication related deliverables

Akanksha Srivastava joined the National Centre of Excellence and Advanced Research on Diets (NCEAR-D), Lady Irwin College, Delhi University in April 2019. She has joined here as Fellow. She has previously worked as Research Fellow in Centre of Food Technology, University of Allahabad. There her work focused on conducting cooking practical classes with reference to specific diseases. Assigned to take lecture for M.Sc (Nutritional Sciences) students. She has also worked as Dietician in Gangaram Hospital and VLCC. She is a contributing writer on online platforms which includes Medfitnetwork and The Startup. She is a life member of Nutrition Society of India (NSI) and also runs her website where she writes articles on health and nutrition related topics. She holds a Master degree in Nutritional Sciences from University of Allahabad.

Shipy Gupta started working with the National Centre of Excellence and Advanced Research on Diets (NCEAR-D), Lady Irwin College in June 2018. Her job responsibilities include primarily finance and accounts related tasks with respect to the centre. She is also involved in preparation, compilation and sorting of documents, verification of data files and coordination with vendors related to various activities at the centre. She has done herB.Com (Pass) from University of Delhi. With over 13 years of work experience, she has served roles of office assistant, account assistant and data entry operator at various government and private sectors.