Prof (Dr) Piyush Pandey is working at the department of Microbiology, Assam University, India. He has twenty-three years of academic and research experience. His research group works on plant associated bacteria, with their potential applications in agriculture and environment. He has published more than 160 papers in journals of high impact, three books, and undertaken sixteen research grants. He has been awarded with ‘DBT-Centre for Excellence award’ for working on plant-rhizosphere mediated bioremediation of polyaromatic hydrocarbons. Also, he has been ‘Overseas Associate’ to Agroscope, Switzerland, SICI-SMP fellow to York University, Canada, and had visited Shizuoka University, Japan. Prof. Pandey is Fellow of International Society of Environmental Botanists, member of several scientific societies and has editorial role in reputed Journals. He has been extensively working on soil and plant microbiomes, rhizoremediation of environmental pollutants, and environmental genomics. He has been awarded from Springer, Society for Environmental Sustainability, and Asian PGPR Society for his research contributions. He has successfully supervised 16 PhDs while 8 are ongoing. He has two Indian patents granted.Dr. Shrivardhan Dheeman is working as an Associate Professor and Head at the Department of Biotechnology and Microbiology, MVN University, India. Dr. Dheeman is involved in teaching and research of microbiology and biotechnology to different disciplines in undergraduate and post-graduate classes. His research interests lie in sustainable agriculture. He is an active member of several scientific bodies of international repute including Indian Science Congress Association (ISCA), Asian PGPR Society for Sustainable Agriculture, Microbiologists Society of India (MBSI) and Indian Botanical Society. He has published over 50 articles, including research papers, reviews, and book chapters in prestigious journals indexed in Web of Science and Scopus. He has edited 5 books, published by Springer Nature.Prof. (Dr.) Dinesh Kumar Maheshwari, former Vice-Chancellor, Gurukul Kangri (Deemed to be University), is a renowned microbiologist, holding the MHRD-UGC-BSR Eminent Faculty Fellowship. Prof. Maheshwari worked at the Biology Research Centre (Szeged), Hungary, in the year 1983-1984. He has visited prestigious universities in Japan, Germany, Belgium, Spain, and South Korea as a Professor. He has received the prestigious awards: ‘Prof. Y.S. Murty Medal’ and the ‘Birbal Sahni Award’ from the Indian Botanical Society in 1992 and 2018, respectively. Prof. Maheshwari was bestowed with the ‘Platinum Jubilee Lecture Award’ at the Indian Science Congress in 2012. For the 103rd Indian Science Congress, he served as President of Plant Science. In 2020, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award at BBA University, Lucknow, and the ‘Vigyan Vibhuti Award’ from the Government of Uttarakhand. Prof. Maheshwari has more than 260 publications, has guided 51 Ph.D. students, and published two dozen books, including 18 edited volumes and one monograph published by Springer Nature.
