In November 2022, representatives from three US-based universities visited Vientiane, Laos in support of the Applied Nutrition Research Capacity Building (ANRCB) project in Lao PDR, funded by USAID via the LASER PULSE program. It was the first team visit since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Led by Purdue University’s College of Agriculture and College...
On December 9, 2022, the Duke University Center for International Development (DCID) and Institute for Sustainable Development at Vietnam’s National Economics University (ISD-NEU) celebrated the successful graduation of eleven entrepreneurs from their intensive, six-week courses on restaurant management, internal controls, and marketing. The graduates represent the first of 812 students who enrolled in the three...
As 2022 comes to an end, I am proud and humbled by the incredible strides LASER PULSE has made this year in conducting contextual research to provide evidence for decision-making on some of the most complex global development challenges. 2022 came with its own set of challenges, and yet again tested the resilience and spirit of...
In Rwanda, the livestock sector, especially dairy cattle farming, contributes substantially to food and nutrition security, poverty reduction, and farmer income generation. Despite successes in cattle production systems, farmers and technicians encounter several challenges that impede the full expression of cattle’s performance. The main hindrances to full expression are inadequate cattle breeding management (including genetics...
The private sector is playing an unprecedented role in creating and shaping opportunities that improve the lives of the people and communities USAID supports. To continue to foster effective engagement between USAID and the private sector, the Agency launched a series of Enduring Results Studies (ERS) in 2016 to examine what drives enduring results in...
Researchers in Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) represent a significant resource of scientific talent to partner with USAID in development research. Development research, in turn, provides new opportunities to MSI researchers to increase the impact of their research and secure new valuable research funding. In view of USAID’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Strategy, the...
Driven by curiosity, Lila Kumar Khatiwada (PI) and Madhav Joshi (Co-PI) of the University of Notre Dame worked closely with development practitioners from ResilientAfrica Network (RAN) and the Gender Equality and Women’s Leadership Program (GEWLP) of South Sudan to carry out an evaluation of USAID’s Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance’s (BHA) pilot multi-year emergency...
LASER PULSE convened its third Research for Development Workshop on Sept. 20-21 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, with a call to action to continue efforts toward researcher-practitioner collaboration in development research. Using its four existing projects in the region as a basis for effectiveness in research for development, LASER PULSE urged attendees to utilize its collaborative...
LASER PULSE is excited to present a new resource entitled Promising Practices for Embedded Research Translation: a toolkit to improve partnerships, processes, products, and dissemination. View the toolkit alongside our entire catalog of research translation resources at https://laserpulse.org/research-translation-tools-templates/. This collection of 24 promising practices is a synthesis of the evidence and knowledge from 187 peer...
The researcher-USAID team consisting of Dr. Priyanka Brunese and Dr. Yuehwern Yih from Purdue University and Tatiana Pulido from USAID presented at USAID’s Higher Education Global Evidence Summit (HEGES) on May 17th, 2022 on “Demystifying Private Sector Engagement: Lessons learned from USAID’s partnering processes.” You can watch the presentation video from HEGES 2022
