From the shores of Australia to the coast of Western Africa, and the landlocked regions of China to Europe, you will find an AGNR research team working to make the world a better place. Faculty are working in both highly populated and remote areas on issues ranging from soil health and restoration, to engineering disease resistant fruit, to energy assistance to war torn regions like Ukraine.
Ken Leonard
Published Paper Finds Women Are Just as Competitive as Men When They Have Family Support Structures
Studies of women from different countries, and in-class surveys with UMD students are challenging entrenched perceptions of competitiveness and workplace gaps between males and females. A recent research paper by Agricultural & Resource Economics professor Ken Leonard dispels assumptions that females are naturally less competitive than males and lays a new framework for viewing female competitiveness. Leonard has been studying gender-related differences in the US and Africa, especially as they relate to economics and decision- making, for decades. His paper compared women at different stages of motherhood across multiple societies and showed that women who have family support nearby when raising children are as competitive as men.
“In western industrialized economies we are not trained to consider the role of our own natal family in the opportunities that we have,” Leonard said. “Young adults see the world as something they will navigate alone, and young women in particular may not recognize just how important their family can be in creating an environment in which they are encouraged to take risks.”
By contrast, many young women in other countries are brought up with the presumption that they will live near their mothers, sisters and aunts who will provide support as they begin their families, and may more naturally take career risks than women living in western societies where this support is not a given.
Leonard’s work is helping the research community and UMD students about to launch into their careers understand the critical, often unseen role of familial support and societal barriers to female ambition.
Thabang Msimango
Visiting Ph.D. Candidate from South Africa Works to Improve Food Safety
What is safe to eat and what might cause us harm? Thabang Msimango, a visiting PhD candidate from the University of Pretoria in South Africa, is working to figure that out. By expanding her knowledge of food safety, she strives to learn more about how to identify food safety hazards, and the risks they pose to human health.
Msimango came to UMD on a Fulbright scholarship where she learned extensively about food safety under the guidance of Abani Pradhan, professor in the Department of Nutrition and Food Science, while also meeting people from all over the world who helped influence her work.
For her PhD work, Msimango concentrates on quantitative risk assessment by predicting the outcome of scenarios such as the number of people that would get sick if they consumed lettuce that was contaminated with foodborne bacteria. To her, the importance of food safety cannot be understated because food safety affects the health of humans, but it also impacts the economy, trade between countries, and food security.
To increase the amount of people with access to safe foods, “It starts with the countries themselves,” Msimango says. “Governments have a huge role to play in enforcing the rules and regulations around food safety in their countries, so collaboration between producers, consumers, and governments are vital to ensure the availability of safe food access for everyone.”