October 16 is World Food Day, a world campaign to rejoice the founding of the Food and Agriculture Organization 80 years ago and work towards a healthy, sustainable and food-secure future. More than 670 million people people on this planet are ravenous. Millions of others face rising obesity rates and struggle to get healthy foods for correct nutrition.
World Food Day calls not only the world's governments, but in addition business, academia, the media and even youth, to take motion to advertise resilient food systems and fight hunger. This 12 months, the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Laboratory (J-WAFS) is spotlighting an MIT researcher who’s working toward this goal by studying food and water systems within the Global South.
J-WAFS seed grants provide funding for early-stage research projects which might be unique to previous work. In an eleventh round of seed grant funding in 2025, 10 MIT faculty members received support to conduct their cutting-edge water and food research. Ali Aouad PhD '17, assistant professor of operations management on the MIT Sloan School of Management, was certainly one of those fellows. “Before coming to MIT, I had been in search of possible research centers and initiatives that attempted to bring together food systems research,” says Aouad. “And that’s why I used to be really enthusiastic about J-WAFS.”
Aouad gathered more details about J-WAFS at the brand new faculty orientation meeting in August 2024, where he spoke with J-WAFS staff and learned concerning the program's funding opportunities for water and food research. Later in the autumn semester, he attended some J-WAFS seminars on agricultural economics and water resources management. Aouad knew then that his project fit perfectly with the J-WAFS mission of securing water and food supplies for humanity.
Aouad's seed project focuses on food subsidies. With a background in operations research and an interest in digital platforms, much of his work has focused on aligning supply-side operations to heterogeneous customer preferences. Previous projects include retail and matching systems projects. “I began to think that this type of demand-driven approach is also very relevant to vital societal challenges, especially related to food security,” says Aouad. Before starting his doctoral work at MIT, Aouad worked on projects that focused on subsidies for small-scale farmers in low- and middle-income countries. “I believe behind my mind I’ve all the time been fascinated with solving these problems,” he noted.
His seed grant project, Optimal subsidy design: Application to food aid programsgoals to make use of data on preferences and buying habits of local grocery stores in India to tell food aid policy and optimize subsidy design. Typical data collection systems equivalent to point-of-sales usually are not as available in India's local grocery stores, making it difficult for low-income individuals to acquire this kind of data. “Mom and pop shops are extremely vital last-mile providers in the case of nutrition,” he explains.
For this project, the research team provided point-of-sale scanners to local grocers to trace shopping habits. “We need to develop an algorithm that converts these transactions right into a type of 'revelation' of people' latent preferences,” says Aouad. “This allows us to model and optimize the food assistance programs – how much variety and adaptability is provided making an allowance for the expected increase in demand.” He continues: “Now, after all, our ability to reply detailed design questions (across different products and price points) is determined by the standard of our inferences from the information, and so we want more sophisticated and robust algorithms here.”
Following data collection and model development, the The ultimate goal of this research is to tell policy surrounding food assistance programs through an “optimization approach.” Aouad describes the complexity of using optimization to drive policy. “Policies are sometimes based on expertise, outdated systems or policy considerations. Many researchers produce rigorous evidence to tell food policy, however it is fair to say that the variety of approach I propose on this research shouldn’t be commonly used. I see a possibility to bring a brand new approach and methodological tradition to an issue that has been central to policy for a lot of many years.”
The overall health of consumers is the explanation food assistance programs exist, but measuring long-term effects on diets and changes in purchasing behavior is difficult. In previous research, Aouad noted that the short-term impact of food aid interventions will be significant. However, these effects are sometimes only short-lived. “This is a captivating query that I don't think we are able to answer inside the framework of the interventions we’re considering. However, I believe it’s something I would really like to take up in research and maybe develop hypotheses for future work on how we are able to change diet-related behaviors in the long run.”
While his project is developing a brand new methodology for calibrating food assistance programs, large-scale applications usually are not promised. “Frankly, much of what drives subsidy mechanisms and food aid programs also is determined by how easy and cost-effective it’s to implement these measures in the primary place,” comments Aouad. Cost and infrastructure barriers are inevitable for this kind of policy research and for sustaining these programs. Aouad's efforts will provide insights into customer preferences and subsidy optimization in a pilot, but replicating this approach at real scale will be costly. Aouad hopes to gather proxy information from customers that may each feed into the model and supply insights right into a more cost effective solution to collect data for large-scale implementation.
There remains to be much work to be done to make sure food security for all, whether through advances in agriculture, food assistance programs or ways to advertise adequate nutrition. As the 2026 seed allocation deadline approaches, J-WAFS will proceed its mission to support MIT faculty in pursuing progressive projects which have practical and real-world impact on water and food system challenges.
