Shahidur R. Khandker was a Lead Economist in the Rural Development Team. He was also a core team member of the Environment and Energy Research Team. He studied in Canada and received a Ph.D.degree in economics from McMaster University. At the World Bank, he was a lead researcher in the areas of poverty, rural infrastructure, microfinance, energy, and gender. He has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals and in the areas of microfinance, poverty, and rural development. He published three books from the World Bank. He had more than 20 years of experience in the Bank as a researcher. He also worked in the World Bank Institute and led a major global capacity building program on poverty analysis, monitoring, and impact evaluation to support the poverty reduction strategies of the World Bank member countries. His current research include poverty and income seasonality, microfinance and hard-core poor, rural road, rural electrification, and energy poverty. Prior to joining the Bank, he worked in the Economic Growth Center of Yale University and Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies.