Dr. Nitya Mittal
Nitya Mittal is a post-doctoral fellow at CeMIS. Her research focuses on issues in improving the nutrition and health of young children in India. Her most recent work was on examining the paradox of food insecurity among children in food secure households, and vice versa, in agricultural households. Alongside this, she also worked on developing efficient metrics to measure quantity and quality of diet, as the existing measures, namely the weighment method and dietary recall, are very expensive and involve time-consuming surveys.
Nitya received her PhD in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics in February 2016 under the mentorship of Prof. J. V. Meenakshi and Dr. Deepti Goel. Her thesis evaluated the impact of a pre-school health intervention on dietary intakes and health outcomes of young children. It also shed light on patterns and factors affecting intra-household allocation of food to young children in rural Indian households. She has also provided research support for a range of projects, including those on nutrifarms, consumer acceptance of nutritious foods, and impact assessment of biofortified crops.