Kandikere R. Sridhar is an Adjunct Professor (Department of Biosciences, Mangalore University, India) and a Visiting Professor at NITTE (Deemed to be University), Mangalore, India. His research areas are the Diversity and Ecology of Fungi of the Western Ghats and maritime habitats. He was an NSERC fellow and visiting professor at Mount Allison University, Canada; the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research at UFZ and Martin Luther University, Germany; and the Centre of Biology, University of Minho, Portugal. He is a recipient of the Dr. Shome Memorial Award (2004), Vice President (2013), President (2018) of the Mycological Society of India (IMSI). He is a Fellow of the Indian Mycological Society, Kolkata (2014), Distinguished Asian Mycologist (2015), Outstanding Leader in Education and Research, Association of Agricultural Technology, Bangkok (2016), and Fellow of the Karnataka Science and Technology Academy, India (2023). He received the Lifetime Achievement Award of MSI (2019) and the Association of Fungal Biologists (AFB), India (2025). He has mentored 25 PhD theses, 5 MPhil theses, and 25 MSc projects (mycology, food science, and myriapodology). He was a UGC-BSR Faculty Fellow, India (2014−2017) and in the top 2% of scientists in the field of mycology (2020−2025). He has published over 600 research papers, edited 22 books, and reviewed over 200 research articles, 25 project proposals, 15 book proposals, and he has evaluated 25 PhD theses (Australia, India, Mauritius, and Thailand).Sunil K. Deshmukh is a Scientific Advisor to Greenvention Biotech, Uruli Kanchan, Pune, India, and AGPharm Bioinnovations LLP, Patiala, Punjab, India. He is a veteran industrial mycologist who spent a substantial part of his career in drug discovery at Hoechst Marion Roussel Limited [now Sanofi India Ltd.], Mumbai, and Piramal Enterprises Limited, Mumbai. He has also served at the TERI-Deakin Nanobiotechnology Centre, New Delhi, and as an Adjunct Associate Professor at Deakin University, Australia. He has to his credit 8 patents, 158 publications and 28 books on various aspects of fungi and natural products of microbial origin. He is the president of the Association of Fungal Biologists (AFB) and a past president of the Mycological Society of India (MSI). Dr. Deshmukh is the Managing Editor of Mycological Spectrum, the official journal of the Association of Fungal Biologists. He has approximately four decades of research experience dealing with bioactives from fungi, including keratinophilic fungi. He has approximately four decades of research experience in getting bioactives from fungi and various aspects of keratinophilic fungi.Patricia Velez serves as a faculty member (Research Professor) at the Institute of Biology, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) where her work aims to explore the diversity, ecology, and potential utilization of fungal communities, particularly in marine and threatened ecosystems. She teaches courses on microbial molecular ecology and taxonomy in the Graduate School of Biological Sciences at the UNAM, and has mentored 31 graduate and undergraduate students in diverse topics of mycology. She has published over 40 peer-reviewed publications in international journals, being recognized with numerous awards and fellowships, including the prestigious Alfonso Caso Medal for her doctoral research, the City U–Molitoris Scholarship for Marine Mycology, and the Early-Career Scientists Award (17th Deepsea Biology Symposium) for her research on marine and deepsea fungal diversity. Presently, she serves as a member of the IUCN Specialist Group on Aquatic Fungi and as editor of the Revista Mexicana de Biodiversidad and MycoAsia journals.
