Chowdhury Jalal joined Nutrition International in 2010 and currently serves as Senior Technical Advisor, Evaluation and Strategic Research. In his role, he supports planning, coordination, and quality assurance of the organization’s evaluation and research projects, contributes to relevant policy and guidelines, and supports evidence generation and dissemination of research findings. His work primarily focuses on implementation research (IR), including program design and process evaluation, to better inform and improve implementation of Nutrition International’s programs.
In addition to IR and evaluation research, Jalal plays a key role in advancing the science underlying nutrition programming. In collaboration with external organizations and institutions, he contributes to the public knowledge on best practices for nutrition programs and policy. Highlights of his most recent contributions include development of a method to systematically design integration of nutrition-sensitive and nutrition-specific intervention components into multi-sectoral programs. His research supports acceptability and efficacy trials of iron-fortified red lentils and the scale-up, distribution and marketing of the product.
Jalal is an adjunct professor at the College of Pharmacy and Nutrition, University of Saskatchewan. He is also an advisor to Hamutuk, a project integrating nutrition into the policies of government agencies and into the work of members of the private sector in East Timor, and Drivers of Food Choice, a competitive grant program to support new research on food choice managed by the University of South Carolina.
Before joining Nutrition International, Jalal led the Nutrition Research Unit at BRAC, Bangladesh. He has expertise in community and international nutrition, program design and evaluation, implementation research and in overseeing large-scale surveys and surveillance. Jalal has a PhD in International Nutrition from Cornell University and a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) from the University of Dhaka.