Mywish Maredia Recognized for Innovations in Legumes

Congratulations to AFRE professor Dr. Mywish Maredia for receiving an Award for Meritorious Achievement from the Technical Management Advisory Committee (TMAC) of the Feed the Future Legume Innovation Lab in August, 2017.

AFRE professor Mywish Maredia

Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics (AFRE) professor Dr. Mywish Maredia received an Award for Meritorious Achievement from the Technical Management Advisory Committee (TMAC) of the Feed the Future Legume Innovation Lab in August, 2017.

“It’s a tremendous honor,” says Maredia. “It means a lot that my peers would take these steps to recognize my research and work.”

Maredia won the award in recognition of her laudable contributions to research on grain legumes and the development of technologies that benefit smallholder farms in developing countries, specifically in Africa and Latin America. The award was presented during the Feed the Future Legume Innovation Lab Grain Legume Research Conference banquet on August 17 in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

“This award is so rightfully deserved,” says Legume Innovation Lab Deputy Director Cynthia Donovan. “Mywish has provided the guidance needed by grain legume researchers to design and implement research that contributes to food security across many developing countries.”

Maredia’s award reflects the importance of her contributions in assessing the impact of the technologies from the Bean/Cowpea Collaborative Research Support Program (CRSP) and the Dry Grain Pulses CRSP, both predecessors of the Legume Innovation Lab, resulting in Impact Briefs on technologies in Latin America, Haiti and Sub-Saharan Africa.

A leader in the sector, Maredia provided guidance and training to all of the Legume Innovation Lab researchers on how to establish and evaluate Impact Pathways, to ensure that the research program was developed with an eye to reaching end users.

Maredia’s career and research has focused on the economic impacts of agricultural research, technology adoption, seed system efficiency, and the economics of science and technology policies. She has extensive experience working with development projects in Africa, Latin America and Asia in designing and conducting impact evaluations on a wide range of topics, including land titling, nutrition and value chain, information and communication technologies (ICT), adoption of agricultural technologies, and the assessment of technology transfer models (extension).

More recently, Maredia led research concerning willingness to pay for seed and effectiveness of the use of animated videos as a low cost training tool. Throughout her career, she has mentored graduate students and young professionals, especially in the area of impact assessment and survey research, helping to create the cadre of professionals that can respond to the current demand for empirical evidence of development programs.

This award comes as a recognition of Maredia’s important research and her contributions to capacity building, and acts as a lifetime achievement award for her impactful work.

Learn more about Dr. Maredia and the Feed the Future Legume Innovation Lab.

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