Professor Nurul Islam is a leading development economist who combines academic excellence with policymaking at the highest level. He has an illustrious career spanning over three decades - Professor at Dhaka University, Founder-Director of Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies, and Deputy Chairman of the First Planning Commission laying the economic foundations of independent Bangladesh. Later, as he moved on to the world stage he became Assistant Director General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation and is currently Emeritus Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington DC. Educated at Harvard where he received his Ph.D. in Economics, he held visiting appointments at various universities abroad including Oxford and Yale and was Chairman of the UN Committee on Development Policy. He has written extensively on various aspects of trade, development, food security and public policy.