Prof. P. Gunasekaran is a Senior Professor of Microbiology in India. He has 33 years of teaching and research experience in Microbiology, Biotechnology and Genomics. He obtained his Bachelor’s Degree in Chemistry (1974) and Master’s Degree in Biology (1976) from Madurai Kamaraj University, Madurai. Subsequently, he obtained his Doctorate Degree in Microbiology (1980) from Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar. He started his career as a Lecturer cum Curator in Microbiology at Punjab University, Chandigarh in 1980 and became a Faculty of Madurai Kamaraj University in 1981. Presently, he is serving as the Vice-Chancellor of Thiruvalluvar University, Vellore.Prof. P. Gunasekaran has made significant contributions in Industrial Microbiology especially on ethanol fermentation technology and microbial enzyme technology. His research has been focused mainly on Zymomonas mobilis, an ethanol producing bacterium. In addition to the research on Z. mobilis, he has made significant contributions in process optimization and production of various industrial enzymes from different bacterial and fungal sources. He visited several countries worldwide including USA, UK, France, Mexico, Japan, South Korea and Hungary to conduct colloborative research programs.He has introduced a new postgraduate course, M.Sc. Genomics at MKU, for the first time in India, Under the UGC-supported Centre for Excellence in Genomic Sciences (CEGS) programme. He elevated this course to a new hight as Integrated M.Sc.–Ph.D. course in Genomics, for the first time in India with the support of DBT-supported Interdisciplinary Programme of Life Sciences (IPLS). With the support from the UGC, New Delhi he has established Networking Research Centre in Biological Sciences (NRCBS) with State of the Art research laboratory facility which cater the need of the researchers from any time from any where in the country.He has guided 36 Ph.D students in his career and 4 students are waiting for final viva voce examination. He is presently guiding 8 Ph.D students at MKU. He has published 150 Research articles in National and International Journals with a cumulative imapct foctor of 250 and his reserach articles has been cited 1923 time in various journal artilces with a h-index of 23 and i10 index of 50. In addition, he has contributed 28 book chapters in books published by leading publishers such as Springer. He has presented his research findings in more than 200 National and International conferences. He is serving as the Editor of three International journals such as Applied Biotechnology and Biotechnology (USA), Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology (South Korea) and Indian Journal of Microbiology (India). In addition, he served as the Guest Editor of special issues in leading Indian journals such as Current Science, Journal of Scientific Research, Indian Journal of Biotechnology and Indian Journal of Experimental Biology.At national level, he has been elected as the President of Biotechnology Research Society of India (BRSI), India, twice consecutively (2011- 13 and 2013-16). He served as the President of Association of Microbiologists of India (AMI), India for the year 2008-2009. During his tenure, the AMI had tie-up with international societies such as American Society for Microbiology (ASM) and International Society for Microbial Ecology (ISME). The official journal of the AMI, Indian Journal of Microbiology has been published published by Springer. He has chaired and served as a member of several Committee, Councils and Boards of various fundsing agencies. He has organized two International Conferences and more than 25 workshops /summer schools/ winter schools.Dr Santosh Noronha is a biochemical engineer by training who has evolved multidisciplinary interests. He has focused on understanding various metabolic and regulatory aspects of microbial systems, towards rationally manipulating their productivity for production of therapeutics. He is Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of technology, Mumbai, India. Prof. Ashok Pandey is currently Executive Director, Centre for Energy and Environmental Sustainability-India, Lucknow. His major research and technological development interests are industrial and environmental biotechnology and energy biosciences, focusing on biomass to biofuels and chemicals, waste to wealth and energy, etc.
