Prof. H.N Thatoi is serving as the Director of Center for Industrial Biotechnology Research (CIBR) at Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan (SOA) University. Prior to that he served as a Professor in the Department of Biotechnology of Maharaja Sriram Chandra Bhanja Deo University. He has obtained his MSc, MPhil, and PhD in Botany from Utkal University. His major research interests and areas include sustainable production of renewable energy, mushroom diversity and bioactivity, Bioremediation, Structural and Computational biology, Nanotechnology, etc. To date, he is credited with the publication of 25 books and more than 326 research papers in national and international journals, proceedings of conferences and book chapters, and has been awarded with two patents. He serves as member of several scientific societies and editorial boards of reputable national and international journals. Dr. Thatoi is a Functional Area Expert in Ecology and Biodiversity and is accredited by QCI, NABET, MoEF, Govt. of India.Dr. Sukanta K. Pradhan is serving as HOD in the Department of Bioinformatics of Odisha University of Agriculture and Technology (OUAT). He obtained his B.Sc(Ag) and M.Sc(Bioinformatics) from OUAT and Ph.D (Biotechnology) from Ravenshaw University. He is also working as the Director, OUAT Data Centre. The teaching and research interest of Dr. Pradhan includes Genomics, Metagenomics, Transcriptomics, Bioinformatics, Biotechnology, and Microbiology. He has successfully implemented several research projects funded by DBT Govt. of India, RKVY Govt. of Odisha, DST Govt. of Odisha. Till date, Dr. Pradhan is credited with publication of 58 research papers in reputed national and international journals and 8 book chapters. He serves as member of several scientific societies of national repute. So far, he has guided 01 Ph.D. scholar and 53 M.Sc students for their thesis and dissertation works. He has visited USA and Bangkok to attend International Conferences on Computational Biology. Dr. Upendra Kumar is working as Senior Scientist at ICAR-National Rice Research Institute, Cuttack (Odisha), India. Meanwhile, he has served as Visiting Scientist at CSIRO, Adelaide, Australia twice (2016 & 2023). His research work is a blend of basic and applied nature, covering major aspects of Microbiology in relation to plant and soil health. Till date he has led several internal and external projects granted by ICAR, RKVY, DST, DBT, NASF etc. with funding amount of more than 15 Cr. He has more than 17 years experience in rice research and published more than 509 articles (journals, books, book chapters, technology bulletins, popular articles, e-publications etc) and also guided more than 15 MSc and PhD students. The cumulative impact factor of his publication is about 267. He has also developed more than 12 technology/product like liquid and carrier-based rice-specific bioinoculants for nutrient, pest and microbial decomposition of rice straw. He has also developed the Azolla-based biofertilizer (sporocarp), livestock feed and microbial-growth medium. He has also constructed liquid biofertilizer production unit at NRRI, Cuttack for the first time. He has developed csaXpert mobile app and characterized the microbial resources in relation to nitrogen fixation, nitrification and denitrification under varying nutrient and climatic conditions in rice-based cropping systems and deposited these microbial cultures in authentic repositories. Through these works, he has been conferred with the Edita David Memorial-2014 (AZRA, Bhubaneswar), Best Scientist Award Twice from ICAR-NRRI, Cuttack (2017 & 2023), AZRA Fellow-2018, Lal Bahadur Shastri Outstanding Young Scientist Award 2020 (ICAR, New Delhi), Nanaji Deshmukh ICAR Award for Outstanding Interdisciplinary Team Research in Agriculture and allied Sciences-2020 (ICAR, New Delhi) and Fellow of Association of Rice Research Workers (ARRW)-2020, SCON recognition Award-2021 and Young Scientist Awards Twice (GAP, 2018 & AZRA, 2022).
