Sohel Rana is a former smallholder farmer who studied rural development at the bachelor and masters. He completed his PhD in agricultural sciences at the Center for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn, in 2025. In his doctoral research, he examined temporary migration of smallholder farmers in Bangladesh. Following his PhD, he began a postdoctoral fellowship at ZEF, where he studies agricultural technology adoption among smallholders in South and Southeast Asia. Previously, he worked on RCT-based evidence gathering research with Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) and scaled up evidence-based rural development programs with Evidence Action in Bangladesh. His research interests center on promoting climate-adaptive agriculture in smallholder farming contexts.