Biographical note

Dr. Khan obtained his Ph.D. in Agricultural Microbiology from Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India. He has been the recipient of a Post Graduate Merit Scholarship and University Gold Medal in his M. Sc. Programme. He has experience of working in research projects and teaching at graduate and post­ graduate levels. Dr. Khan has been teaching microbiology, phytomedicine, molecular biology and immunology to these students. He has more than five years of research and academics experiences by serving as a Senior Research Fellow of Indian Council of Medical Research, New Delhi, India; Research Associate at Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Institute of Microbial Technology, Chandigarh, India. He gained international experiences in research and teaching by serving as Post-Doctoral Fellow in Phytomedicine Programme with the prestigious group of Prof. J. N. Eloff in University of Pretoria, South Africa; and as an Assistant Professor in Biotechnology at Yenugnam University, South Korea. His research work had contributed significantly in the area of medicinal plants for pharmaceutical and applied industrial biotechnology and microbiology. He had published seventeen research papers and two review article in referred journals so far. He has contributed as author in seventeen book chapters. He has one book to his credit as first authorship and reviewer of more than 10 peer reviewed journals from publishers of Elsevier, Springer, Wiley, Taylor and Francis. His overall research activity has led him with a cumulative impact factor of papers published, 29; total number of citations, 633; and highest citation of a single paper being 156. His thrust area of current research work includes natural products for their novel anti-infective activity against drug-resistant pathogenic bacteria and fungi especially Candida albicans and Staphylococcus aureus focusing on anti-biofilm activity. Dr. Iqbal Ahmad has been a senior professor in the Department of Agricultural Microbiology at Aligarh Muslim University, India, He has more than 250 peer-reviewed international publications along with being engaged as Principal/co-principal investigator of many national/international projects on Applied and Environmental Microbiology. His research work has been cited more than 21000 times as per Google Scholar Records. He has been a visiting Professor at Umm Al-Qura University, Makkah, Saudi Arabia, since 2016. He has a lot of experience working on antimicrobial resistance among pathogenic bacteria from medical and environmental sources. His recent research interest in tackling the environmental AMR problem in India is supported by the Department of Biotechnology, New Delhi, in collaboration with the British Government, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)/NERC. Dr. Ahmad has delivered numerous invited lectures at national/international meetings and guided more than 20 Ph.D. students in the field of environmental and Applied Microbiology. Additionally, Dr. Ahmad has already contributed his enormous microbiology and drug resistance knowledge by publishing 09 international books for academicians. Dr. Debprasad Chattopadhyay (PhD) has over 38 years of research experience in the field of Microbiology, Virology, Traditional Medicine, Ethnomedicine, and Molecular Medicine in identifying nature-based leads against difficult-to-treat diseases through documentation and validation of purity, safety, and potency (PSP) of traditional practices of Indian tribes with mode or molecular mechanism of action. He is currently the editor of the prestigious journal Frontiers in Pharmacology, editorial board member of the Journal of Ethnopharmacology, and reviewer of more than 40 peer-reviewed journals. He is the recipient of several awards such as Outstanding Ethnopharmacologist (2016), Best Science Communicator (2009), Amiya Bose Oration (2008), R.V. Rajam Endowment of IMA 1998, and International Society of Chemotherapy Young Scientist 1991.