Dr. Balkrishna A. Shinde completed his Bachelor's (2006), Master's (2008) and Ph. D. (2018) degree in Botany from Department of Botany, Savitribai Phule Pune University and CSIR-National Chemical Laboratory, Pune, India. His doctoral work comprises regulation of plant-induced defense by WRKY transcription factor to improve resistance in tomato against fungal pathogen, Alternaria solani. He was visiting Ph. D. scholar at Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel to work on the functional characterization genes involved in Steroidal Glycol-Alkaloid biosynthesis in tomato. He was UGC-Dr. D. S. Kothari postdoctoral Fellow (Higher Fellowship) at Shivaji University, Kolhapur, India. His postdoctoral work included molecular mechanism of defense response during pigeonpea-Fusarium interaction. He also worked as Senior Project Associate, Division of Biochemical Sciences, CSIR-National Chemical Laboratory, Pune to work on molecular diversity, colchicine content and seed germination aspects of Gloriosa superba. The main emphasis of his research work includes plant–pathogen/pest interactions, plant specialized metabolites and plant metabolic pathway engineering.

Dr. Priyanka Nath has obtained her Ph. D in Biosciences and Bioengineering from Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati. She is a gold medallist in 5 year integrated Masters in Biosciences and Bioinformatics from Tezpur Central University. She has experience of working in various projects funded by different government agencies including DBT and DST. She has published 9 research articles in peer reviewed journals. Her research expertise includes Protein engineering and Structure-function relationship in active biomolecules using bioinformatics approach. She was awarded DST Inspire fellowship from Department of Science and Technology, New Delhi, India on April 2015.

Dr. Sulaxna Pandey has obtained her Ph. D in Biotechnology from Agharkar Research Institute, Pune under SPPU, Pune. She has 9 years’ research experience and published 6 research articles in a peer reviewed journals. Her research expertise includes anotechnology, Microfluidics, Biosensors,Bomedical Imaging, Cancer Biology, In vitro and In vivo. She was awarded with ICMR-SRF in 2018 and PET-2017. She is an experienced scientific, Medical writer, reviewer and an editor for Pubmed journals.

After completion of M.Sc. in Chemistry from Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, Dr. Jha joined Prof. G. Krishnamoorthy's group at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai for Ph.D. Her thesis work was aimed at understanding the mechanism of aggregation of proteins into amyloid fibrils, a phenomenon which is responsible for diseases like Alzheimer and Parkinson. During her Ph.D., she developed and used a novel time-resolved fluorescence anisotropy-based method to map the structure of amyloid fibrils. This knowledge is important for the design of drugs for amyloid diseases. Her interest in structural biology and ultrafast fluorescence spectroscopy led to the collaborations with Prof. Jayant B. Udgaonkar at National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore and Prof. Tahei Tahara at RIKEN, Japan. Following her Ph.D., she worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Prof. Jennifer R. Cochran at Department of Bioengineering Stanford University, USA where she explored different methods to engineer proteins/peptides which could inhibit the growth of cancer cells. She also developed novel fusion proteins which could be used as molecular imaging agents for tumor progression and showed the feasibility of the method in mouse models. After her post-doc she joined Agharkar Research Institute, Pune as a DST-Inspire faculty/ scientist in nanobioscience group. Her interdisciplinary research interest led to productive collaborations with IISER and NCL, Pune. Together, she developed novel therapeutic agents like beta-breaker cyclic peptides, chitosan-PLGA based nanoparticles and ionic liquids as inhibitors for amyloid-beta protein aggregation to target Alzheimer’s disease. Her work has been published in various internationally reputed peer reviewed journals namely ACS Biochemistry, ACS Langmuir, ACS Biomacromolecules, Journal of Molecular biology, RSC Journal of Materials Chemistry, Biophysical Chemistry etc.

Dr. Vijayasarathi obtained his undergraduate and master's degrees, followed by a M. Phil degree in Chemistry from Pondicherry University in Puducherry. Dr. Vijayasarathi holds his Ph.D. in Chemistry (Chemoinformatics) from Pondicherry University, Puducherry. The main objective of the Ph.D. work was to develop a knowledge based java application to define, encode and detect the fundamental chemical entities of organic reactivity interest using chemical ontology. He has qualified state level eligibility test for the lectureship in Chemistry TN-SET. He has six years of research experience to his credit that includes the positions like project assistant, and post-doctoral research experience like Research Associate I & II. He has attended various national and international conferences, workshops, SDP, STTP, etc. and has 06 publications to his credit.

Dr. Manisha had completed graduation in Pharmacy from University of Pune, M. Tech. in Bioprocess Technology from ICT, Mumbai, followed by a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Bharati Vidyapeeth University, Pune. She has qualified GATE – a national level competitive exam. Also has five years industrial and research experience to her credit and during that period she holds the positions like Research Associate and Senior Research associate. She has attended national and international conferences as delegates and invited speaker. Besides, she has 13 research publications and 03 book chapters to her credit. She was selected for prestigious DST-INSPIRE and CSIR-SRF Fellowship during her Ph.D. tenure.

Dr. Prasad completed M. Sc. in Biotechnology in 2010 followed by qualifying CSIR-NET (Lectureship) in the same year. He isolated 11 new, and chemo-taxonomically characterized 4 unclassified endophytic bacterial isolates (with initiation of large scale process optimization of a antibacterial peptide from endophyte Bacillus spp. From Anthocephalus spp. - Kadamba tree) from medicinal plants for a project at Vidya Pratishthan’s School of Biotechnology, Baramati. As a Lecturer at Nowrosjee Wadia college, he taught, examined and supervised undergraduate Biotechnology students. His special achievements at the college included supervising blind students and contributing in an extra credit course as a visiting faculty. He joined Prof. Ameeta Ravikamar’s laboratory at Institute of Bioinformatics and Biotechnology, Savitribai Phule Pune University in 2013 and received PhD in Biochemistry in 2021. During his PhD, he elucidated the human pancreatic amylase inhibition mechanism of a phytochemical using enzyme kinetics, binding thermodynamics, and molecular docking. He has published a process patent on the purification process. He continued as a Project Consultant after his PhD followed by assisting on an ICMR project in the Hepatitis Group at the National Institute of Virology alongwith assistance in Computational Data Analysis of Sars-Cov-2 sequences. His research at NIV led to identification of a few potential antiviral drug candidates through RNA-seq data analysis and computational drug repurposing approaches.

Ms. Yogita Ranade has completed her M.Sc. in Microbiology from the University of Pune, Maharashtra. She has qualified national-level competitive exams, ASRB-ARS-NET in Agricultural Microbiology conducted by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). She has more than six years of research experience and five years of teaching experience to her credit. She has attended various national and international conferences as delegate and has 18 publications to her credit.