Mohan is Chairman of Dr. Mohan’s Diabetes Specialities Centre and President of the Madras Diabetes Research Foundation, Chennai, India. He obtained PhD in 1987 and DSc in 1997. He has over 1530 publications including 986 original research articles in peer reviewed journals, 367 review articles and 186 chapters in text books. His work has a h-index of 145 and has over 174,000 citations. He has received Fellowships from all the four Royal College of Physicians of UK and Ireland, American College of Endocrinology and the American College of Physicians. He has received 200 awards including the prestigious Dr. B.C. Roy Award by the Medical Council of India and the Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Centenary Award from the Indian Council of Medical Research. In 2012 he was awarded the Padma Shri, one of the highest civilian awards given by the Govt. of India. He was conferred Hon. Doctorate from Deakin University of Melbourne in 2017. He has been conferred with the prestigious Harold Rifkin Distinguished International Service in the Cause of Diabetes Award by the American Diabetes Association in 2018 for his pioneering work in the field of diabetes and he is the first Indian to receive this award. He

Raghunathan is Distinguished Guest Professor and Head, National Centre for Mathematics at IIT-Bombay, Mumbai, India. He obtained his PhD in mathematics from the University of Mumbai in 1966 and was appointed associate professor at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research the same year. His awards include: the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in Mathematics; Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, India, 1977; TWAS Prize for Mathematics, 1991; and the 1991 Srinivas Ramanujan Medal, Indian National Science Academy (INSA) He is a fellow of INSA, Delhi, the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore, and the Royal Society, UK. He has been awarded (2012) the Padma Bhushan award for Science and Engineering, a high civilian award by the Government of India.

Narlikar received his BSc (Banaras Hindu Univ., 1957) and PhD (1963) and ScD (1976) at Cambridge. In 1988 he became the foun. dir. of the Inter-Univ. Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Pune, where he was dir. until his retirement in 2003 and where he is now emeritus prof. He is SS Bhatnagar laureate (1978) in physics and has several other national awards including Padmavibhushan (2004). In 1996 he received the UNESCO Kalinga Award for science popularization. In 2004, he received the Janssen Medal of the Societe Astronomique de France. He is a fellow of the 3 natl. academies of science in India and assoc. of the Royal Astronomical Society, London. In 2012 he received TWAS Institution building award. He has received hon. doctorates from several Indian universities and also one from the Univ. of Natal, Durban, South Africa. In 2011 he received the State Award Maharashtra Bhushan.

Valiathan is national research professor at the Manipal University. After obtaining surgical training (Univ. of Liverpool), a master's (surgery), and fellowship (Royal College of Surgeons, England), he specialized in cardiac surgery (Johns Hopkins and Georgetown), and became fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, Canada. He was faculty member at Georgetown Univ. Hospital, Postgrad. Medical Inst. (Chandigarh), Indian Inst. of Tech. (Chennai), Sree Chitra Tirunal Inst. (Trivandrum) and was past pres. of the Indian Natl. Science Academy. His awards include Hunterian professorship, Royal College of Surgeons of England; fellowship, Royal College of Physicians, London; Chevalier, order of palmes academiques, French Govt.; Samuel P.Asper Award of the Johns Hopkins Medical School; and 7 doctorates (h.c.). He is member of the Natl. Academies for Science, Med. and Eng. (India) and the Society of Thoracic Surgeons, USA.

Shukla is Univ. Prof. and founding Dir. of Climate Dynamics, PhD., found chair AOES dept., George Mason Univ. Obtained his BSc, MSc and PhD from BHU, India, and DSc from MIT. Previously, he was: res. assoc., Princeton; vis. assoc. prof., MIT; sr. scientist, GSFC, NASA; prof., Univ. of Maryland; chairman, TOGA Panel, NAS, USA; chairman, Int. Advisory Panel for Weather and Climate, India; Founding dir., Ctr. for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies. Honors and awards include: Honorary member, AMS; Prime Minister's Council on Climate Change, Padma Shri (India, 2012), IMO Prize, AGU Fellow, Rossby Medal, AMS; Walker Gold Medal, IMS; Exceptional Sci. Achiev. Medal, NASA. His membership includes: VA Governor's Commission on Climate; Joint Scientific Comm. and Chair of Modeling Panel, Climate Variability, WCRP; Fellow of IMS and AMS. Contributions include "Predictability in the Midst of Chaos." He is Founder of Gandhi College for the education of rural women in the village of his birth in India.

Tyagi is professor, Delhi University South Campus, India. He has served as head, Dept. of Plant Molecular Biology; chairman, Board of Research Studies; and dir., Interdisciplinary Centre for Plant Genomics at Delhi University South Campus; and dir., Natl. Inst. Plant Genome Research, India. He has made important contributions to genome sequencing of rice, tomato and chickpea, investigated transcriptome profile and characterized function of several novel genes/regulatory elements related to rice reproductive system and stress responsive networks by forward and reverse genetics approaches. His awards include: JC Bose Natl. Fellowship; DBT Natl. Bioscience Award; NASI Reliance Industries Platinum Jubilee Award; BP Pal Memorial Award; Birbal Sahni Medal; and Om Prakash Bhasin Award for Sci and Tech. He is a member of: Ind. Natl. Science Acad.; Natl. Acad. of Sciences India; Ind. Acad. Science and Natl. Acad. of Agric. Scs., India; Former President, Natl. Acad. of Sciences India.

Patnaik is INSA Senior Scientist and Adjunct Professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies,and was Vice Chancellor, Defence Inst. of Advanced Technology (DIAT), Deemed Univ., Pune, India. He was previously Honorary Professor, Dept of Electronic Systems Engg, Prof., Dept. of Computer Science and Automation, and Convener, Computational Neurobiology Group, IISc. He obtained his PhD (1978) and DSc (1989) in computer science and engineering from IISc. He has been honoured with over 20 awards for contributions to electronics, communications, and information technology including the Technical Achievement Award (1999), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), USA, Computer Society; Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru Natl. Award for Engineering and Technology, 1999; and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) Award for Innovation in Applied Research, 2002. He is a Fellow of IEEE and all 4 leading science and engineering academies in India.www.lmpatnaik.in.

Chandrasekaran is a INSA Senior Scientist at the Department of Organic Chemistry , Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India. He is also a Honorary Professor of the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Jakkur, Bangalore. He was previously lecturer, assistant professor and professor of the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, India from 1978-89. He is a synthetic organic chemist who is internationally recognized for his contributions to methodology development. His work has included the study of chemistry of Mo-S systems, organic-inorganic hybrid materials as catalysts for asymmetric synthesis, synthesis of peptides and synthesis of thiosugars as glycosidase inhibitors. He has been awarded the SS Bhatnagar Prize, CSIR, New Delhi and JC Bose National Fellowship of DST. He is a fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences and the Indian National Science Academy.

Padmanabhan, Distinguished Professor at IUCAA, Pune, has authored about 270 research papers and eleven books including eight graduate-level textbooks published by Cambridge University Press. His research, providing an alternative perspective of gravity, in which gravity arises as an emergent phenomenon has far reaching implications for quantum gravity and has won prizes six times from the Gravity Research Foundation, USA including the First Award in 2008. He is an elected Fellow of all the three Academies of Science in India. He was the President of the Cosmology Commission of the International Astronomical Union (2009-2012), Chairman of the Astrophysics Commission of International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (2011-2014) and a Sackler Distinguished Astronomer of the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge. The national and international awards received by him include, the Presidential medal of honor, Padma Shri (2007), Inaugural Infosys Prize in Physical Sciences (2009), TWAS Prize in Physics (2011), Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award (1996), INSA Vainu-Bappu Medal (2007), Millennium Medal (2000), J.C.Bose Fellowship (2008-), Miegunah Award of Melbourne University (2004).