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Our Team

GroundWork’s core team provides the majority of technical support to clients. GroundWork also has an extensive roster of public health experts that can be enlisted to meet the needs of each project. With the language skills of our core team, we are able to work in English, French, German, Arabic, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.

Fabian Rohner, PhD

Fabian is an international nutrition and public health specialist, focusing on the design and management of impact evaluations and M&E plans for large-scale food fortification and infant and young child nutrition projects. Fabian has conducted clinical trials related to the prevention and treatment of malaria, helminths and micronutrient malnutrition, and maternal and child health. Fabian has conducted multiple national micronutrient surveys, and is an expert in iron and iodine deficiencies. He served on the iodine expert panel of the NIH-led BOND (Biomarkers of Nutrition for Development) initiative, and is a member of the BRINDA (Biomarkers Reflecting Inflammation and Nutritional Determinants of Anemia) project and serves on the technical advisory panel for the Power of Nutrition. He has worked on projects in Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mali, Morocco, Niger, the Philippines, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Tanzania, Uganda, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam. He is currently based in Hanoi, Vietnam

James P Wirth, PhD

James is an international nutrition specialist, focusing on the design and implementation of national public health and nutrition surveys, research on the determinants of stunting and anemia, and monitoring and evaluation systems. James has conducted case control studies related examining the association between inflammation and enteropathy on child growth, and has conducted multiple national micronutrient and nutrition surveys. James is a member of the steering committee of the BRINDA project (Biomarkers Reflecting Inflammation and Nutritional Determinants of Anemia), and has managed qualitative program evaluations related to food fortification and humanitarian response. He has worked in Angola, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Dominican Republic, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Gambia, India, Jordan, Kenya, Mozambique, Oman, Sierra Leone, Somaliland, Tanzania, Uganda, Vietnam, and Zambia. James is currently based in Geneva, Switzerland.

Nicolai Petry, PhD

Nicolai is a human nutrition and agriculture specialist, focusing on biofortification programs and the impact of biofortified staple crops on human health. Nicolai has conducted several clinical trials with focus on mineral bioavailability from foods, the development of chronic diseases and the effect of iron on gut microbiota. He conducted multiple trials in Rwanda investigating iron bioavailability from biofortified beans, and multiple large-scale micronutrient surveys. He has also worked on projects assessing the consumption of fortified foods in Ghana and optimizing the regulatory monitoring system for salt iodization in Ethiopia. He has worked on various projects in Oman, Uzbekistan, Kuwait, Ethiopia, Ghana, Gambia, Kuwait, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Switzerland. He is currently based in Zurich, Switzerland.

Rita Wegmüller, PhD

Rita Wegmüller is an international nutrition specialist focusing on micronutrient interventions and their efficacy and safety in relation to neglected tropical diseases in low-income countries. Rita has conducted research related to iron and zinc deficiency with a focus on the collection of dietary intake data, the development of novel food fortification products, and the investigation of micronutrient absorption and efficacy in clinical trials in areas with a high-burden of infectious diseases. She also monitored clinical drug trials in sub-Saharan Africa. She supported national micronutrient surveys in Ghana and Uzbekistan and is currently leading on a program evaluation to reduce maternal and child malnutrition in Kenya. She has worked in Angola, Burkina Faso, Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Iran, Kenya, Malawi, Morocco, Switzerland, Tanzania, Thailand, and Uzbekistan. She is currently based in Basel, Switzerland.

Valeria Galetti, PhD
Valeria is a human nutrition and data analysis specialist. She has conducted several clinical trials with focus on mineral bioavailability from water, cereals and insects with the aim of counteracting their deficiencies in vulnerable populations both in Switzerland and in low- and middle-income countries by using standard fortification approaches but also by testing novel mineral compounds. She also contributed research on understating human mineral metabolism and refining their physiologic requirements. From 2016 to 2021, she worked as a Senior Scientist at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, and was responsible for the data analyses of several research projects conducted in South-Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, India, Bangladesh, Thailand, and Switzerland. She specialized in the use of mixed-effect models approaches for the evaluation of cross-sectional, longitudinal, and pooled analyses. She is currently based in Lugano, Switzerland.
Carla El Mallah, PhD

Carla is a nutritionist and a biomedical scientist specializing in nutrient metabolism. She has over a decade of research experience focusing on the relationship between diet and diseases. Her recent research focused on the impact of low-quality protein on inflammatory markers, where she explored the specific role of lysine. Carla was the survey coordinator for the Lebanon Integrated Micronutrient Anthropometric and Child Development Survey (LIMA), has supported Lebanon’s salt iodization program, and was involved in several research and consultancy projects in Lebanon, Jordan, UAE, France, and Switzerland. Carla’s expertise extends to the academic sphere, where she has been actively involved in teaching and mentoring students in the field of nutrition. Additionally, she has provided training in basic nutrition, laboratory techniques, and research methodologies. Carla has been coordinating the Nutrition in Emergencies regional training course, held in Beirut, for the past 8 years. She is currently based in Lebanon and speaks Arabic, English and French.

William Ekow Spio Donkor, MPH

William Donkor is a community nutrition and public health specialist, focusing on research related to maternal and childcare interventions, health disparities, health and nutrition determinants, and barriers to access health services and nutrition interventions. William is passionate about equitable access to quality health and nutrition services, resilient health systems and services research and evidence-based processes towards moving from policy adoption to policy implementation in Sub-Saharan Africa. He has managed and supervised the implementation of multiple surveys and nutrition trials, and has supported national micronutrient surveys in Ghana and The Gambia and a program evaluation to reduce maternal and child malnutrition in Kenya. He is currently based in Accra, Ghana.

Doreen Gille, MSc

Doreen Gille is a human biologist with expertise in consumer behavior assessment and scientific project management, related to -omics techniques. Her research focus is on foods and their influence on human health and disease with regards to acute molecular changes occurring after their consumption. She supports GroundWork in accounting, contracting, and corporate management. Doreen is based in Zurich, Switzerland and speaks German, English and French.

Ebenezer Adjetey, BSc

Ebenezer Adjetey is an IT specialist, focusing on survey programming and data management for studies and surveys related to nutrition and public health. Ebenezer has programmed questionnaires and managed data for research trials related to infant and young child nutrition and iron-folate supplementation and adolescent girls in Ghana. As a consultant for GroundWork, he has programmed questionnaires for national nutrition and micronutrient surveys in Ghana, Uzbekistan, Somalia, and Jordan. Ebenezer is passionate about developing data collection systems that generate accurate, complete, and timely data. He is currently based in Accra, Ghana.

Bradley Woodruff, MD MPH

Bradley Woodruff is a physician and epidemiologist. He worked at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for 20 years from 1987 to 2007. During his CDC career, he assisted UN agencies and non-governmental organizations by providing nutrition and health assistance to persons affected by humanitarian emergencies, and supervised a team of CDC epidemiologists and nutritionists who carried out national nutrition surveys. As a consultant, Dr. Woodruff supported national surveys in Bangladesh, Georgia, Mongolia, the Philippines, and the United Arab Emirates, and researched the association of household food security and child malnutrition in Uganda, and the effectiveness of supplemental feeding in Ethiopia and home fortification in China. He currently serves as a Senior Epidemiology and Public Health Consultant to GroundWork, and has provided survey design and data analysis support to nutrition surveys in Azerbaijan, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, India, Sierra Leone, and Zambia. He also led a quantitative analysis project investigating the determinants of stunting reduction in Ethiopia. He is currently based in Victoria, Canada.