Samira joined IRRI in September 2022 as a development economist. She is co-leading WP3 of the Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia (TAFSSA) project which is improving access to and affordability of sustainably produced healthy foods through evidence and actions across the food system. She is also co-leading WP2 of the Resilient Cities project which involves building inclusive and sustainable food markets and safeguarding supply chains. She is currently an honorary research fellow at the University of Exeter, UK.

Prior to joining IRRI, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Exeter to support the development of the Health Economics framework aligned to Food Standards Agency policy agenda of food safety, affordability, security and sustainability. She was also a Research Associate at Imperial College London where she worked in the scientific team of the Malabo Montpellier Panel. She was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Food Systems, Health and the Environment at SOAS, University of London where she was involved in the Sustainable and Healthy Food Systems (SHEFS) project. Her research focused on analysing the economic and food systems drivers of fruit and vegetable consumption, primarily using India's National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) household data. During her Ph.D., she was a research consultant for the Advancing Research on Nutrition and Agriculture (ARENA) project at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).