Waste to Wealth

Dr Reeta Rani Singhania MSc, PhD is a DBT- Bioscience Energy Overseas Fellow working at DBT-IOC Center for Advanced Bioenergy Research, Faridabad, India in the LC Bioethanol Program. She completed her PhD in Biotechnology, prior to pursuing postdoctoral studies at the EPFL, Switzerland and University Blaise Pascal, France. She has more than 35 publications to her credit. She is the recipient of several awards including the AU CBT Excellence award and IFIBiop Young Scientist award. She has served as a guest editor for special issues of RENE and BITE.

Dr Rashmi Avinash Agarwal is a young scientist fellow at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IITK). She completed her doctoral degree at the IITK with a dissertation on “Coordination Polymers of Transition Metal Ions with Benzimidazole Based Ligands: Single-Crystal to Single-Crystal (SC-SC) Transformations, Gas Storage and Magnetic Studies”. Her fields of interest include Supramolecular Chemistry, CoordinationChemistry, Coordination Polymers, Organic and Inorganic Synthesis, Hydrothermal Synthesis of Coordination Polymers, Crystallization, and Crystal Structure Determination. She has published over 20 journal papers.

Prof Praveen Kumar Ramanujam is Head of the Biotechnology Department at Arunai Engineering College, Tiruvannamalai, India. His area of research includes renewable energy from biomass and municipal waste. He has authored more than 52 publications in peer-reviewed journals and holds four patents. He is currently, Vice-President of “Engineers Without Borders – India (EWB-India),” Chennai chapter. He received the “Outstanding Young Investigator Award” for excellence in research and teaching in a rural setting, by Raise.Rural.

Dr Rajeev K Sukumaran is a senior scientist at the CSIR-National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology (CSIR-NIIST) in Trivandrum, India. He currently heads the Biofuels and Biorefineries Section of the CSIR-NIIST’s Microbial Processes and Technology Division. He received his PhD in Biotechnology from CUSAT and completed postdoctoral training in Molecular Immunology and Stem Cell Biology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York and National University Hospital, Singapore. His current research interests include: developing enzymes for biomass conversion, heterologous protein expression in fungi, and the molecular biology of cellulase gene regulation.  He has authored more than 85 publications.