Dr Chowdhury graduated from Jahangirnagar University, Dhaka, Bangladesh with a BSc (Hons.) in Economics, an MA in Economics from the University of Kiel, Germany and a PhD in Agricultural Economics from Bonn University, Germany. Prior to joining the University of Sydney, he worked for the International Food Policy Research Institute (from 2003-2006) and the World Bank (2006-2007) in Washington DC, USA.Dr Chowdhury's research program has been and continues to be shaped by the broad goal of trying to understand how development interventions influence households, particularly poor households under market imperfections. Empirical evaluation of impacts of interventions particularly that are related to technologies and infrastructures are important to him. He uses both experimental and quasi-experimental methods in evaluation as well as other quantitative methods. For interventions that cannot be extended to the desired segments of a population through traditional market mechanisms, he examines alternative incentive schemes that are attainable in a second-best world.