Rao served as the Director of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology(CCMB) in Hyderabad, India. He is CSIR-Distinguished Scientist and Sir JC Bose National Fellow. President of Society of Biological Chemists (India); President of the Telangana Academy of Science. He obtained BSc from Osmania University; MSc in physical chemistry from Kakatiya University; PhD in Chemistry from University of Hyderabad. Later, he joined CCMB and initiated intact lens spectroscopic investigation. He has developed Red Edge Excitation Shift (REES) for intact biological material. His main research interest is small heat shock proteins, specially αB-crystallin, in health and disease. His research interests include molecular diagnostics, microfluids, nano biology, cell cycle, differentiation and apoptosis. He had visiting positions in USA, Japan and Australia. He is Fellow of all 3 national science academies of India, and has won the Bhatnagar, Ranbaxy and Sreenivasayya Awards of India, and the Rohto Award. Distinguished Alumni of the University Of Hyderabad,

Dasgupta is professor in the Department of Physics at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, India. He did doctoral research at the University of Pennsylvania, postdoctoral work at the University of California, San Diego, and Harvard University. Afterwards, he taught at the University of Minnesota for a few years before joining IISc in 1987. He has made important contributions in the theory of phase transitions, statistical mechanics of disordered systems, kinetics of surface growth and fluctuations, and dynamics of supercooled liquids near the glass transition. His awards include: Fellowship of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the DAE-Raja Ramanna Prize and the J.C. Bose National Fellowship. His memberships include all three science academies in India.

Sahni (PhD, Minnesota) is professor emeritus, Panjab University, and (retd.) INSA senior scientist at the Centre of Advanced Study in Geology, Lucknow University, India. He has combined with ease and success the subdisciplines of paleontology, sedimentology and geochronology. Using this three-fold approach, Sahni has been able to highlight the uniqueness of the Indian geological record in terms of the India/Asia collision, duration of the Deccan Trap activity and the Cretaceous/Eary Tertiary microvertebrate paleontology. He has also discovered the bones of a stocky, carnivorous dinosaur with an unusual head crest, named Rajasaurus narmadensis, belonging to a significant line of predatory dinosaurs known from the southern continents. He is a fellow of all the science academies of India, and an honorary member of the American Society for Vertebrate Paleontology.

Sood is the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India (PSA to GoI) since April 2022. He is also the Chairperson of the Prime Minister’s Science, Technology & Innovation Advisory Council (PM-STIAC). Sood is also a Distinguished Year of Science Professor at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore. He had also served as a Member of Scientific Advisory Council (SAC) to the Prime Minister of India from 2009-14. Sood has a doctorate in Physics from IISc Bangalore. His research interests include the physics of nanosystems and soft matter. He has published more than 450 papers in peer-reviewed journals and holds several patents. His work has been recognised by many awards, including the Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award in India; President of the Indian National Science Academy (2017–19); President of the Indian Academy of Sciences (2010–12); and Secretary-General, TWAS, (2013–18). He was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society, UK (FRS) in 2015. He has received the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, the G.D.Birla Award for Scientific Research, TWAS Prize in Physics and Homi Bhabha Medal of Indian National Science Academy.

Ramasesha is a professor in the Solid State and Structural Chemistry Unit of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He obtained his PhD in 1977 from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. He was post-doctoral research associate at the Universities of Oxford and Princeton. He has been awarded the BM Birla science prize and Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar prize in chemistry. He is a J.C. Bose National fellow and fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences and the Indian National Science Academy. His area of research is modeling electronic and magnetic and nonlinear optic phenomena in molecular materials and low dimensional extended systems. He has developed exact diagonalization methods to study molecular magnets, extended the density matrix renormalization group methods to study static and dynamic properties of electron states in conjugated polymers and spin chains.

Sivaram is an Emeritus Professor and INSA Emeritus Scientist at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune, India. His previous positions include CSIR Bhatnagar Fellow (2010-15), J.C.Bose National Fellow(2005-14), and Director, CSIR-NCL, Pune, (2002-10). He has led research in polymer chemistry in the area of controlled synthesis of polymers, transition metal catalyzed polymerization of olefins, bio-degradable polymers, and new chemistry/catalysts for high-performance polymers. He has to his credit over 250 papers and 100 issued and applied patents. Awards: Padma Shri; Prof. Santappa Silver Jubilee Award; KG Naik Gold Medal, MS Univ. of Baroda; FICCI Award; Prof. SR Palit Memorial Award; Millennium Medal, Ind Sci Congress Assoc; Goyal Prize in App Sci; Gold Medal of Chem Res Soc of India for lifetime achievement in chemistry; International Award in Polymer Science, awarded by the Japan Promotion of Advancement of Science and DSc (h.c), Purdue Univ., USA. He is a fellow of the Indian Acad. of Sciences, Natl. Acad. of Sciences, Indian Natl. Science Acad., Indian Natl. Acad. of Eng., Roy. Soc. Chem., UK and IUPAC.

Lal is dist. univ. prof. of soil science and dir., Carbon Management and Sequestration Center, Ohio State U., Columbus. After obtaining his PhD at Ohio State and completing postdoctoral work at The U. of Sydney, Australia, in 1969, he joined the Intl. Inst. of Tropical Agriculture in Ibadan, Nigeria. He returned to Ohio State in 1987 where he has taught two classes: environmental soil physics, and soils and climate change, and conducted research on soil carbon sequestration, soil restoration and food security. Honours include: three h.c. doctorates; Hugh Hammond Bennett Award (1998); Borlaug Award (2005); IPCC Nobel Peace Prize certificate; Zayed Prize diploma, Liebig Award (2006). He is a fellow of five societies, incl. the American Assn. for Adv. of Science (1996) and The Rothamsted (2013). He has authored 15 and edited 56 books, and has about 1700 scientific articles to his credit.

Ramesh is Prof. Satish Dhawan Professor, Geosciences Division, Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, India. He is one of the pioneering stable isotope geochemists in India. He obtained his MSc from the University of Madras in 1978 and his PhD in physics at Gujarat University in 1986. His contributions include: Characterization and quantification of global change processes, especially paleoclimates; demonstrated that stable isotope variations in tree rings and sand corals are related to climatic parameters; and demonstrated that peat samples from south India preserved a record of paleomonsoon changes. He has reconstructed past monsoon variations from marine sediments and speleothems. He is a fellow of all three science academies of India. His awards include: Young Scientist Award, INSA, 1987; SS Bhatnagar Award, 1998; TWAS Prize in Earth Sciences, 2006; K.R. Ramanathan Gold Medal 2011; ISRO Lifetime achievement award-2016