Dr Rajarshi Kumar Gaur earned his PhD in 2005 and is now a Professor in the Department of Biotechnology, Gorakhpur University, India. His PhD was on molecular characterization of sugarcane viruses, viz., mosaic, streak mosaic and yellow luteovirus. In 2007 he received the Visiting Scientist Fellowship from Swedish Institute Fellowship, Sweden to work at Umeå University, Sweden. He received MASHAV fellowship of Israel government for his post-doctoral studies and joined The Volcani Centre, Israel and BenGurion University, Negev, Israel. He received Post-Doc. Fellowship from ICGEB, Italy in 2008. He has made significant contributions on sugarcane viruses and published 130 national/international papers, authored 17 books, including Elsevier title Plant Virus-Host Interaction, Second Edition. and presented approximately 50 papers at national and international conferences. He has been honored as a Fellow of Linnean Society, Fellow of Royal society of Biology, Fellow of Society of Plant Research. Fellow of Society of Applied Biology (FSAB) and Fellow of International Society of Biotechnology (FISBT), Dr. Basavaprabhu L. Patil obtained his PhD from the Department of Plant Molecular Biology, University of Delhi (South Campus), New Delhi, India. During his PhD, he worked in a European Union-funded program on geminiviruses, in collaboration with the John Innes Centre, Norwich, United Kingdom. During his PhD, he also worked as a DAAD Scholar at the University of Stuttgart, Germany. He did his postdoctoral research at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, St. Louis, United States (2006–10) and contributed to the characterization of cassava viruses from Africa and the development of virus-resistant transgenic cassava. Later (2011–12), he moved to the University of Basel, Switzerland, to work on characterization of cassava viruses from India in an Indo-Swiss program. Since 2018, he has been working as a Principal Scientist at ICAR-Indian Institute of Horticultural Research, Bengaluru, India. He has published extensively in reputed journals, and has several book chapters & books to his credit. He has also trained several research scholars from Africa, the Americas, and India in the area of molecular plant virology and RNA-interference technology. He has received several fellowships and grants during his research career and was honored with the IVS Fellow Award by the Indian Virological Society in 2014 in recognition of his contribution to the field of plant virology. He received the European Union’s Erasmus Mundus scholarship in 2016. In 2022, he received the prestigious Fulbright-Nehru Academic & Professional Excellence Fellowship to visit University of California, Davis (USA). Recently, he was conferred with Prof. B.M. Johri memorial Award, by the Society for Plant Research (India). He has served as an external expert to assess the scientists from CSIR (Council for Scientific & Industrial Research, India) & ICAR (India). He is also a recognized editor for International Journals, and reviewer for Indian/International Grant Applications. Dr. R. Selvarajan completed his PhD degree in Plant Pathology (Plant Virology) from the ICAR-Indian Agriculture Research Institute, New Delhi. He started his career as a scientist in ICAR-IIHR, Bangalore and joined ICAR- National Research Centre for Banana, Tiruchirapalli, Tamil Nadu in 1996. He has served as Principal Scientist (Plant Virology) since 2009. He developed effective cutting-edge indigenous diagnostic kits for banana viruses, and his Molecular Virology lab has been recognized as Accredited Test TL by DBT. He guides three PhDs and 71 M.Sc. and M. Phil students. He has published 73 research papers in national and international journals in addition to 2 books, 20 book chapters, 7 technical bulletins, 30 popular articles, and 8 training manuals. He has served as Secretary of the Indian Virological Society since 2014, is an editor for Virus Disease, an associate of professional societies, and has organized national and international trainings, symposium and conferences.
