Professor Delia Grace Randolph joined the University of Greenwich in May 2020. She was formerly Program Leader (joint) for the Animal and Human Health Program at the International Livestock Research Institute, based in Nairobi, Kenya.

This is part of the CGIAR, a global partnership that unites international organizations engaged in research about food security. CGIAR research aims to reduce rural poverty, increase food security, improve human health and nutrition, and sustainable management of natural resources. It has had a long collaboration with NRI

Originally trained as a veterinarian, she worked for five years in mainly large animal practice in Lancashire, UK. After that she worked as a volunteer for three years in Bangladesh supporting livestock development.

Subsequently she undertook a MSc at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland and then a PhD at the Free University Berlin, in Germany. Her post-doctoral position was with Cornell University and ILRI, focusing on food safety. Her MSc and PhD were both on vector-borne animal diseases in Africa: namely heartwater and trypanosomiasis.

From 2006 to 2020 she worked at ILRI mainly in One Health/Ecohealth, that is research at intersection of the health of the environment, animals and people.

She has received various awards including the Grieg medal and the Trevor Blackburn award and has published  high impact factor journals such as the Lancet and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. She co-authored the first and so far only book on food safety in informal markets

Her PhD was on antimicrobial resistance and as this area has risen up the development agenda, she and her team have built a large portfolio of projects on agriculture-associated antimicrobial resistance.

She has worked with the World Animal Health Organisation, the World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the World Bank and other international, regional and national organisations.

Her research has mainly focused on food safety in informal markets in low and middle income countries. Her research approach is based on risk analysis, adapted to the context by approaches such as participatory epidemiology.

She studies food safety in systems and as such investigates trade-offs and synergies with livelihoods, gender, equity, nutrition, environment and other relevant factors.

She has also worked on emerging zoonoses such as highly pathogenic avian influenza, Rift Valley fever and more recently COVID-19. In addition, she has researched neglected zoonoses such as brucellosis.

Overall, she is interested in sustainable animal agriculture what innovations, interventions, and shifts in mindset are needed to maximise the benefits for poor consumers, farmers and value chain actors while minimising the harms for human health, animal health and well-being and ecosystem services.

She has been PI on 16 projects in the last 10 years. Four ongoing are:

• CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health: $3 million per year: Flagship Leader:  2012 to 2020.
  • This project focused firs on all agriculture associated human disease and in its second phase on foodborne disease. This is important because the health burden is equivalent to malaria, HIV/AIDs or TB. Main innovations consisted on focus on informal markets and use of new approaches such as risk analysis and participatory epidemiology
• Urban Food Markets in Africa – incentivizing food safety (Pull-Push Project). 2018 to ongoing. $4,027,446. BMGF/FCDO
  • This project focuses on a new approach to food safety in informal markets, we call the “triple stool”. It works with policy and decision makers to develop an enabling environment, with informal chain actors to build skills and to provide incentives for behaviour change, and with customers to be part of the incentive structure.
• Safe Food Fair Food for Cambodia. $747,886. 2018 to Ongoing. Innovation Lab for Sustainable Livestock (USAID).
  • This project brings and evidence based approach to food safety in Cambodia. Starting with risk prioritisation, we carried out a risk assessment which is informing an intervention.
• MoreMilk: Assessing the health and nutrition impacts of market-based agriculture interventions to improve the dairy sector in Africa and India. $4 million USD 2016 -2021: BMGF
  • This project considered investments in food safety and is investigating scaling and sustainability of previous projects in 3 countries. An RCT is also planned to see if carefully crafted messages and training vendors can increase milk safety and improve nutrition.

• 2014 Trevor Blackburn Association award for contributions to animal health and welfare in developing countries presented by the British Veterinary Association
• 1999 Grieg Medal for outstanding academic performance at Edinburgh University
• Visiting professor at the Hanoi University of Public Health, Hanoi, Vietnam
• Honorary lecturer Moi University, College of Health Science, Nairobi, Kenya
• Member of the Editorial Board for Global Food Security Journal
• Member of the Editorial Board for Ecohealth Journal
• Member of the writing team for the UN Committee of Food Security High Level Panel of Experts publication on Sustainable Agriculture 2015-2016.
• Adviser to the World Health Organisation Thematic Reference Group on Environment, Agriculture and Infectious Diseases of Poverty and co-author of priorities paper 2012-2013