Dr Melgar-Quiñonez is the Director of the Institute for Global Food Security and the Margaret A. Gilliam Faculty Scholar in Food Security with an appointment in the McGill School of Dietetics and Human Nutrition. With a degree in Medicine (1992) and a doctoral degree in Science s (1996) from the Friedrich Schiller University in Germany, he moved to McGill in September of 2012, after 9 years of work as a professor in the Department of Nutrition at the Ohio State University (2003-2012). Previously he worked in public health nutrition and food security research at the University of California in Davis (1998-2003) and at the Mexican Institute of Public Health (1996-1998). Dr Melgar-Quiñonez has been a food security advisor on to several countries in Latin America. He has conducted food security research in 20 countries in Africa, Asia and the Americas, and maintains a strong collaboration with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) as a researcher in the project Voices of the Hungry which incorporates 150 countries.

Dr Hugo Melgar-Quiñonez's Research concentrates in understanding the causes of hunger in developing countries and in vulnerable populations in industrialized countries, and its consequences to human health. He also works closely with development agencies and governmental programs fighting hunger, helping them to assess the impact of their programs.