Prof. Vijai Singh is currently serving as Head of the Department of Biosciences, School of Science and Dean (Research & Innovation) at Indrashil University, Rajpur, Mehsana, India. Prior to this, he held the position of Associate Professor in the same department at Indrashil University. He has also served as Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and Biotechnology at the Institute of Advanced Research, Gandhinagar, and in the Department of Biotechnology at the Invertis University, Bareilly, India. Earlier of his career, Prof. Singh worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Synthetic Biology Group at the Institute of Systems and Synthetic Biology, Paris, France and at the School of Energy & Chemical Engineering at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Ulsan, South Korea. He earned his Ph.D. in Biotechnology in 2009 from the ICAR-National Bureau of Fish Genetic Resources, Uttar Pradesh Technical University, Lucknow, India. His doctoral research focused on the development of molecular and immunoassays for the diagnosis of Aeromonas hydrophila. Prof. Singh’s research interests lies in the design and construction of novel biosynthetic pathways for production of medically and industrially important biomolecules. His laboratory is also actively engaged in developing CRISPR-Cas systems for gene knock out, knock in, gene regulation and diagnostic. With over 15 years of research and teaching experience, his areas of expertise include synthetic biology, metabolic engineering, bioinformatics, microbiology, and industrial microbiology. He has an extensive academic record, with over 110 articles, 89 book chapters, 26 books and 3 patents to his credits. Prof. Singh has received number of prestigious awards, including the Bioclues Innovation, Research and Development Award (2023) from the BIOCLUES Society, the Vice Chancellor's Best Research Award (2023) from Indrashil University, and the Agathiyar Chemical Biology Award (2023) from the Society of Chemical and Synthetic Biology. At Indrashil University, he currently serves as chairman of the Board of Study, and is a member of the Academic Council of Indrashil University. He also holds the position of the Member Secretary of the Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBSC) at the university. Dr. Singh is actively involved in national and international scientific advisory roles.

• 1. Advances and opportunity in design of microbial cell factories for production of biomolecules2. Advances in long DNA synthesis3. Discovery of enzymes responsible for cyclization and post-modification in triterpenoid biosynthesis4. Synthetic biology for metabolic engineering of secondary metabolites5. Synthetic biology design tools for metabolic engineering6. Metabolic engineering for microbial cell factories7. CRISPR based tools for microbial cell factories8. Escherichia coli, the workhorse cell factory for the production of chemicals 9. Bacillus subtilis based microbial cell factories10. Pseudomonas putida- based cell factories11. Streptomyces based cell factories for production of biomolecules and bioactive metabolites 12. Corynebacterium glutamicum as a robust microbial factory for production of value-added proteins and small molecules: Fundamentals and applications 13. Production of high value-added chemicals in engineering methylotrophic cell factories14. Cyanobacteria based microbial cell factories for production of industrial products15. Integrated omics perspective to understand the production of high-value added biomolecules (HVABs) in microalgal cell factories16. Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a microbial cell factory17. Pichia pastoris based microbial cell factories 18. Yarrowia lipolytica engineering as a source of microbial cell factories19. Engineering of microbial cell factories for production of plant-based natural products20. Engineering of microbial cell factories for Omic-guided production of medically important biomolecules 21. Advances and applications of cell-free systems for metabolic production22. Microbial biosensors for discovery and engineering of enzymes and metabolism23. Manipulation of global regulators in Escherichia coli for the synthesis of biotechnologically relevant products