Hyderabad: Dr Bharati Kulkarni took over as the new director of the ICMR-National Institute of Nutrition (ICMR-NIN) on Wednesday. Dr Kulkarni worked as a scientist at NIN for more than 20 years. For the past three years, she has been holding the position of the head of the division of reproductive and child health and nutrition at the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), New Delhi. She specialised in paediatrics from Pune University and has a master's degree in public health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, USA. She got a doctoral degree from Queensland University of Technology, Australia.
She has conceptualised and led several multi-centric research projects on important public health nutrition problems, especially in the domain of maternal and child nutrition, including anaemia, child undernutrition, developmental origins of health and disease, body composition, community-based interventions to promote diet diversity and agriculture — nutrition linkages.
The evidence generated by these studies has contributed to strengthening health and nutrition policies and programmes. She has also contributed to the conceptualisation and initiation of the ICMR's multi-site 'National Health Research Priority' projects for improving complementary feeding for young children, upgrading norms for the growth and development standards for children, reducing anaemia and stillbirth.
She has received several research grants from national and international funding agencies. She has authored more than 130 publications in high-impact peer-reviewed international journals, several book chapters and policy documents. She is a fellow of the National Academy of Medical Sciences, India, and a recipient of oratory awards in honour of Dr Rajammal P. Devadas and Dr P.G. Tulpule.
