Pushpa Kathir

Background

About Pushpa Kathir

I rejoined USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) in Dec 2022 and currently work on administering research, education and extension programs related to food and agricultural sciences. For the last three years, I was a Marketing Specialist at USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) writing rules for 27 marketing order programs to help fruit, vegetable, and specialty crop producers and handlers achieve marketing success through minimum quality requirements, marketing and promotion initiatives, and other authorized efforts that foster success for industry members. During my time with AMS, I analyzed supply chain comments in response to E.O. 14017 as they affect agricultural and food products supply chains and contributed in writing the report on "USDA-Agri Food Supply Chain Assessment - Programs and Policy Options for Strengthening Resilience". Previous to AMS, I worked at NIFA for 16 years administering Agriculture and Food Research Initiate Competitive Program and other competitive programs related to food and agricultural sciences. During that time, I was a Science Embassy Fellow working in Iceland as a science advisor and established a Bioenergy Laboratory and taught students at Keilir Institute of Technology, Keflavik, Iceland. I also worked at the National Science Foundation as a Science Assistant, administering science programs. I was an adjunct faculty and taught biology courses at Northern Virginia Community College for two years. For 10 years, I worked on algal research doing mapping of Chlamydomonas at the University of Minnesota. Publications: & hl=en