Surajbhan Sevda is currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Biotechnology, National Institute of Technology, Warangal, India. Prior to this, he was a technical officer (research scientist) at IIT Guwahati, India. He completed his Doctoral Degree in 2013 from Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, India. He was a visiting scientist at University of Calgary, Canada in 2018. His research experience lies in the bioreactor design, modelling of microbial growth, biofuels, and bioenergy, life cycle analysis (LCA), metal recovery, biosensor development, green chemistry, microbial electrosynthesis, enzyme and antibiotic production.Pradeep Verma is currently the Group Leader at the Bioprocess and Bioenergy Laboratory, Department of Microbiology, at the School of Life Sciences in Central University of Rajasthan (CURAJ). He is a distinguished fellow of several professional organizations, including the Mycological Society of India (MSI Fellow, 2020), the Biotechnological Research Society of India (BRSI Fellow, 2021), and the Association of Microbiological Sciences, India (AMSc, AMI, India, Fellow, 2021). He is the recipient of the Prof. P.C. Jain Memorial Award, by the Mycological Society of India (PCJ-Memorial Award, 2021) and also the recipient of the Ron Cockcroft Travel Award by the Swedish Society, Sweden (2005) In addition, he received the Bridge Fellow JSPS Award in 2022 and conducted joint research work at Kyoto University in Japan. Recently, he was also nominated as a fellow of the International Academy of Wood Sciences (IAWS Fellow 2024), Fellow of the National Academy of Biological Sciences (NABS Fellow 2023) and Fellow of the Association of Fungal Biologist (AFB Fellow 2023). His areas of expertise include microbial diversity, bioremediation, bioprocess development, lignocellulosic, and algal biomass-based biorefineries. He holds several national and international patents in the field of microwave-assisted biomass pretreatment and bio-butanol production.
