Biomass for Bioenergy and Biomaterials (ePub)

Prof. Rakesh Bhatnagar pursued his Ph.D. from the Department of Biochemistry, National Sugar Institute, Kanpur followed by working in Freiburg University, Germany, University of Caen, France and NIH & USAMRIID, USA. He pioneered the teaching of Biotechnology at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, the first of its kind in the country. Prof. Bhatnagar is well known for developing recombinant vaccine against anthrax. This technology has been transferred to the industry and the vaccine is undergoing human clinical trials.

>184 research papers to his credit, his publications have received >5000 citations. He has supervised more than 58 Ph.D students. Prof. Bhatnagar's research has been ranked 7th (The first six were from Pasteur Institute, Harvard Medical School, NIH and USAMRIID) in the anthrax research globally. Recognizing with extraordinary contribution in the field of research and innovation he has been awarded with many prestigious awards and recognition few of them are President's Award for Best Innovation by President of India, ICMR Award for Outstanding research work in the field of Immunology by ICMR, GoI; Ranked 7th among the top ten eminent researchers publishing commendable research papers on anthrax by Open source Global Anthrax Research Literature etc. Prof. Bhatnagar has been a successful administrator and institution builder. He has served the Jawaharlal Nehru University at various important positions like Chairperson, Director and Dean. Because of his efforts School of Biotechnology has been ranked at No.1 biotechnology teaching programme in the country consistently. He has created a world class Biological Safety Laboratory Level III. Recently, Prof. Bhatnagar has finished his term of Vice-Chancellor of Banaras Hindu University and during his term of Vice-Chancellorship he has strived hard to take the University to a new level of excellence.

Dr. Syed Shams Yazdani is Group Leader of the Microbial Engineering group and Coordinator of DBT-ICGEB Centre for Advanced Bioenergy Research at the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in New Delhi, India. His research Interests are in metabolic engineering, synthetic biology, cellulolytic enzymes, and biofuels. He holds a BSc (Hons) Chemistry from Aligarh Muslim University and MSc and PhD (Biotechnology) from Jawaharlal Nehru University. His group is currently involved in development of technologies for fungal enzymes, C5/C6 sugar fermentation and advanced biofuels production, such as butanol, fatty alcohols and alkanes.

His recent achievement include development of most potent enzyme preparation for use in 2G-ethanol process with the use of synthetic biology and genome editing tools in fungal system. His effort in the genome and protein engineering led to highest reported value of drop-in fuel alkane in the bacterial system. These technologies are at various stages of development for commercial exploitation in collaboration with industries.

He serves in various committees of Government of India such as Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Department of Science and Technology (DST), Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC) and many academic institutions of high reputation. His biography was featured in Biospectrum magazine with the title "Next-Gen Biofuel Engineer". He is representing India in the Technical Expert Group of Synthetic Biology at UN Convention of Biological Diversity. He leads several multilateral international collaborative projects, including Indo-UK, Indo-Australia and Indo-US. He is a member of editorial board of Scientific Reports (Nature Publishing Group), Journal of Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology (JIMB), Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology and Indian Journal of Biotechnology, and reviewers of many renowned peer review journals.

>70 publications in high impact international journals, such as JBC, Nature Communications, Metabolic Engineering, and 15 patent applications (with 3 US patents granted).