Member, CPD Board of Trustees and Advisor to the Executive Director, BRAC
Dr Hossain joined as Executive Director of BRAC in June 2007 and is working as Advisor from January 2014. Prior to joining BRAC he was Head of the Social Sciences Division at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), Philippines and Coordinator of the Consortium for the Unfavorable Rice Environments (CURE) in Asia. Dr Hossain began his career in 1970 as a Staff Economist at the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (former PIDE) and rose through the ranks to become its Director General during 1988-91. He also worked as a Visiting Scientist at the Institute of Developing Economies in Tokyo (1981), the International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington DC (1985-87), and the Overseas Development Institute, London (1990).
Dr Hossain received MA in Economics from Dhaka University in 1969 and PhD in Economics from Cambridge University, England in 1977. His major area of research interest is rural development policies. He has conducted research on understanding rural livelihoods and factors contributing to changes in income distribution and poverty, land tenure, micro-credit, rural industries, public works program and agricultural technology focusing on Bangladesh, Eastern India, Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand. He was heavily involved in developing IRRI’s Strategy and Medium Term Plans. He has authored and co-authored a number of books, and papers in refereed journals and edited books.
Dr Hossain serves as a member the Board of Governors of the North South University, and the BRAC University, Dhaka. He is a founding member of the North-South University Foundation, and a member of the Advisory Council of the CGIAR Harvest Plus Project run by IFPRI and CIAT, the Rice Advisory Council of the Syngenta Corporation for Asia and the Pacific. He is also a member of the Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition. He is Chairperson of the Bangladesh Rice Foundation, a civil society think tank on rice policies. He is the President of the Asian Society of Agricultural Economics for 2014 – 2017. He has been selected as one of the 500 most powerful people in the world by Foreign Policy – a global magazine of politics and economics, in 2013.
Visit Dr Mahabub Hossain’s official website
