History

The Interdisciplinary Institute for Food Security (IIFS) at Bangladesh Agricultural University (BAU) has its origins in 2013, when the Netherlands’ NUFFIC-funded NICHE-BGD-156 project was approved with the establishment of an interdisciplinary institute at BAU as a key outcome. In the same year, the “Interdisciplinary Centre for Food Security (ICF)” was formally approved by the BAU Academic Council and BAU Syndicate. In 2014, two MS programs were jointly developed by ICF and Wageningen University, the Netherlands, and ICF began offering an MS in Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security. The University Grants Commission (UGC) of Bangladesh approved the ICF organogram in 2018. In 2019, UGC approved ICF as a new institute of BAU, leading to its renaming as the “Interdisciplinary Institute for Food Security (IIFS),” and in the same year IIFS began offering a BSc in Food Safety Management at the joint request of the Bangladesh Food Safety Authority, FAO, and USAID.