Sustainable Biofuels Development in India

Dr. Anuj K. Chandel is working as a lead scientist for cellulosic ethanol production at Centro de Tecnologia Canavieira (Sugarcane Technology Centre, CTC), Piracicaba, Brazil. He is responsible for scientific leadership for deployment of cellulosic ethanol process at demonstration plant and scale up activities. Overall, he has 16 years’ research experience working in industries and universities on biomass conversion into ethanol, industrial enzymes production and membrane based separations. He has published 52 articles in peer-reviewed journals and 16 book chapters. He has also co-edited 4 books on D-xylitol, lignocellulose degradation, extremophiles and Brazilian bioenergy development. His primary research interest is to develop the sustainable process for bioconversion of lignocellulosics into renewable energy and biochemicals.Proactive research lead with entrepreneur mindset, that brings hands on strategic experience in research projects and startup of piloting to full commercial scale operations. 

Dr. Rajeev Sukumaran is heading the Biofuels and Biorefineries Section at the CSIR-National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology’s Microbial Processes and Technology Division., in Trivandrum, India. He is also the activity lead for the Centre for Biofuels (CBF) at CSIR-NIIST. He has 20 years of research experience spanning diverse fields including fermentation technology, embryonic stem cell biology and transcriptomics, though currently he is working mainly on biomass conversion technologies. He played the leading role in setting up the CBF’s lignocellulosic ethanol pilot plant, and the solid state enzyme production pilot plant at CSIR-NIIST. His current research interests include-Developing enzymes for biomass conversion, Glucose tolerant β-glucosidases, heterologous protein expression in fungi, and fungal genomics. He has served as consultant for some leading Biotech companies in India. He has also publishedwidely with 73 publications in International Journals and has several conference papers, book chapters and reports.