Biographical note

Dr. Prasad is Emeritus Professor, School of Life Sciences, University of Hyderabad (India). He has made outstanding contributions to the fields of bioremediation, bioresources, biomass energy sources, bioeconomy, and to the broad field of environmental biotechnology, all of which are his main areas of expertise. Dr. Prasad has served the Government of India’s Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change as a member of various advisory committees on biodiversity conservation, ecosystem services, pollution control and abatement, environmental information systems and bioremediation of contaminated sites. He is an active visiting scientist for several international universities. Dr Meththika Vithanage is a Professor in Natural Resources at University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Sri Lanka. Her research approach builds on enabling measurements of concentrations and reaction rates in environmental samples for key/emerging pollutants in the environment in order to assess their fate and transport to discover solutions to remediate those using different geo/bio/nano materials. Dr Vithanage’s contribution to science has been recognized by The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) presenting the Fayzah M. Al-Kharafi award in 2020. She is a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, Sri Lanka, and Institute of Chemistry, Ceylon, and was selected as one of the Early Career Women Scientists by the Organization for Women Scientists in Developing Countries, Italy. Her outstanding performance in research publications was recognized by the Presidential Awards, Sri Lanka, for consecutive 8 years from 2011