Ramya Ambikapathi
Senior Research Associate, Department of Global Development

About
Ramya Ambikapathi is a Senior Research Associate in the Cornell CALS Department of Global Development. Her research broadly focuses on how environmental and ecological factors translate to poor nutrition outcomes, and efforts to mitigate these negative impacts. This research has led her to explore gender equity, men’s engagement, family food choices, food environment, informal economy, food systems, and consequently, metrics and methods to measure these complex factors as they relate to nutrition outcomes.
Before joining Cornell, Ramya was a Research Scientist at the Department of Public Health at Purdue University. Ramya completed two postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard Chan and Purdue University working on two cluster randomized control trials in Ethiopia and Tanzania. She has led the “DECIDE study," a Drivers of Food Choice grant exploring family food environments, family diets, and informal food environments in urban Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
Research
Ramya's research vision and approaches are grounded in epidemiology and planetary health, which encompasses both the health of human societies and natural systems. Because of rapidly transitioning food systems and the variable effects of climate change, there is a need for innovative, multiple-methods approaches in researching and evaluating this impact on human nutrition. Therefore, she commonly employs mixed-methods study designs using quantitative methods such as spatial statistics, latent-class modeling, factor analysis, longitudinal analysis, and qualitative methods such as direct observations, interviews, pile-sorting, and more recently, tele-group interviews and qualitative evidence synthesis to study disparities in nutrition outcomes.
Education
- Ph.D in Human Nutrition, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health
- MHS in Global Disease Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health
- BS in Environmental Science, University of Maryland Baltimore County
Interests
Food environments
Food systems
Climate
Awards & Honors
- Abell Award in Urban Policy for Baltimore City (2016)
- Environment, Energy, Sustainability and Health Initiative Fellow (2015-2016)
- National Science Foundation Water, Health, and Climate IGERT fellow (2013-2015)
- Meyerhoff scholar (2003-2007)
- Environmental Protection Agency Greater Research Opportunity (GRO) undergraduate fellow (2005-2007)
Contact Information
102A Bruckner Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853
ramyaa [at] cornell.edu
Ramya in the news

News
Food system shocks – like natural disasters, political conflicts, or pandemics – raise the prices of staple foods, reduce access to good-quality diets and increase hunger. In low- and middle-income countries, the impacts of such shocks can be...
- Department of Global Development
- Food
- Global Development

News
- Cornell Atkinson
- Department of Global Development
- Agriculture