Researcher
Institute of Nutrition, Mahidol University, Thailand
I am a nutritional epidemiologist based at the Institute of Nutrition, Mahidol University and secondarily affiliated as a Department Associate with the Department of Nutrition, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. I received a BA in Chemistry from New York University, MPH in International Health from the University of Michigan, Doctor of Science in Nutrition from Harvard University funded by an NIH National Research Service Award, and postdoctoral training at Harvard funded by NIH and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. My primary research interests involve developing and scaling-up novel methods, technologies, data sources, and human resources for population nutrition surveillance, epidemiology, and research dietetics in middle-income countries, with emphasis on dietary exposures, quantitative methods, hypothesis generation, and participatory approaches. From 2012-2018, I led dietary assessment of adults across urban and rural Mongolia and successfully advocated for evidence-based modernization of the country’s food fortification legislation. From 2018-2021, I directed a 2.5-year international project that produced the Global Diet Quality Score (GDQS) and GDQS app. Since 2021, I have directed a Rockefeller-funded project to expand capacity for monitoring diet quality and key nutritional biomarkers in population surveys. Recently, my work has increasingly shifted toward studying the drivers of dietary risks and malnutrition, with a strong focus on advancing methodology for multifaceted evaluation of urban food environments through innovations in participatory mapping, computer vision, geospatial analytics, and cloud-sourced data. To date, I have lived and conducted in-country research in Mongolia, Bangladesh, and Thailand for almost 9 years in total, led preparation of grant proposals that have collectively provided 2.2 million USD in research funding, published more than 80 peer-reviewed academic articles, and involved more than 500 students as participatory researchers in large-scale dietary and food environment surveys that I have led. I was nominated for full membership in Sigma Xi in 2021 and inducted as the youngest member of Mahidol University’s first cohort of Global Talent Researchers in 2022. For my international contributions to research, education, and capacity building, I was awarded Mahidol University “Rising Researcher of the Year in Science and Technology” and “Top 100 Researcher” in 2026. Publications: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=EB6bC4sAAAAJ.