Prof. Riyaz Sayyed is a Professor and Head of the Department of Biotechnology, PSGVP Mandal's Arts, Science College, Shahada, India. He served as President, Indian Chapter of Asian PGRP Society (2017-2023). He has over 20 years of teaching and research experience in Microbiology and Biotechnology. He is Associate Editor of Environmental Sustainability, Guest Editor of Sustainability (MDPI), Frontiers in Microbiology, Frontiers in Sustainable Food System, and Academic Editor of PeerJ. He has authored over 325 research papers in high IF international journals with total citations of 11010, h-index of 49 and total impact factor of 740. He has edited 32 books with leading publishers. He has been listed among 2% of highly cited researchers consecutively for three years by and Stanford University.

Prof. Sayyed has delivered many invited talks all over the world. He has trained several graduates, post-graduate, and research students and produced seven Ph.D. under his guidance. Dr. Shilpa Mujumdar is the Vice Principal (Research) and Head, Department of Microbiology at Modern College of Arts, Science and Commerce (Autonomous), Pune, India. She has over 17 years of teaching and 15 years of research experience in the field of Microbiology.

Her research areas include plant microbe interaction, biosurfactant production and multiple drug resistance. She worked as a reviewer for many peer reviewed journals such as Frontiers in microbiology, Basic journal of microbiology and phytopathology. She has 4 patents Indian and US to her credit and has authored over 30 peer reviewed research papers. She has published 8 book chapters. Dr. Mujumdar has delivered many invited talks in several conferences. She has guided several graduates, post-graduates and research scholars; currently, three students are pursuing Ph.D.

under her guidance.